Ukraine-Russia war latest: Kyiv claims assassination of Putin’s nuclear general in Moscow scooter bomb attack
Igor Kirillov was charged by Kyiv yesterday over alleged use of banned chemical weapons in war
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Your support makes all the difference.Ukrainian security services have killed a senior Russian general in charge of nuclear protection forces in Moscow today, intelligence sources in Kyiv have claimed.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt after a bomb hidden in an electric scooter detonated.
In a statement to the Financial Times, an intelligence source described Kirillov as a “completely legitimate target”.
He was sanctioned by Britain in October for his battlefield involvement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection forces of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, and his assistant were killed,” the investigative committee said.
Photographs posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a shattered entrance to a building littered with rubble and two bodies lying in the blood-stained snow.
His death comes a day after Ukrainian prosecutors charged him with the alleged use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine war.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said the Ukrainian leadership faces imminent revenge for the “cowardly and despicable strikes”, the RIA state news agency reported.
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Admiral says hybrid war is biggest challenge in Baltic
Russia is disrupting mobile communications and ship-tracking data across the Baltic Sea, endangering vessels and energy supplies to test how Western powers will respond, a Polish admiral overseeing the area said.
Vice Admiral Krzysztof Jaworski said Moscow was systematically using such tactics to hide the movements of its own vessels and disrupt the operations of others in the sea which is bordered by eight Nato countries and Russia.
“Hybrid war in the Baltic is the biggest challenge we are facing,” Jaworski told Reuters in an interview last week, referring to the practise of launching conventional attacks alongside attempts to disrupt politics, energy supplies and other systems.
“We are talking about aggressive behaviour by Russia. They are trying to disrupt our lives,” Jaworski, commander of Poland’s Naval Operations Centre, added. “They are also testing us, us as an alliance (to see) how far they can go.”
US, others condemn deepening military ties between North Korea, Russia
The United States joined nine other nations and the European Union on Monday in condemning the increasing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, the countries said in a joint statement.
“We will continue to act in concert, including through imposition of economic sanctions, to respond to the danger posed by the DPRK-Russia partnership,” the said in the statement, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Britain.
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