Suspected assassin of Russian general Igor Kirillov arrested, Moscow says
Russia’s Investigative Committee says 29-year-old Uzbek man confessed to planting and detonating bomb
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Your support makes all the difference.Russia has said it detained an Uzbek man who confessed to planting and detonating a bomb which killed top Russian general Igor Kirillov.
Kirillov, who was chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops, was killed outside his apartment building on Tuesday along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter went off.
He is the most senior Russian military officer to be assassinated in Russia by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service took responsibility for the killing after Ukraine accused Kirillov of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops – an accusation Moscow denies.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said in a statement the unnamed suspect had said he had come to Moscow to carry out an assignment for Ukraine’s intelligence services.
In a video published by the Baza news outlet, the apparent suspect is seen sitting in a van describing his actions. It was not clear under what conditions he was speaking and The Independent could not verify the video’s authenticity.
Dressed in a winter coat, the suspect is shown saying he had come to Moscow at the orders of Ukraine’s intelligence services, bought an electric scooter and received an improvised explosive device. He describes placing the device on the electric scooter and parking it outside the apartment block where Kirillov lived.
Investigators cited him as saying he set up a surveillance camera in a hire car which, they said, was watched in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro by people who organised the killing.
The suspect, who is thought to have been born in 1995, is shown saying he remotely detonated the device when Kirillov left the building. He says Ukraine had offered him $100,000 (£78,000) and residency in a European country.
It comes as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky admitted the country’s military is not capable of recovering the territory currently occupied by Russia without diplomatic pressure from Kyiv’s allies.
Speaking to French newspaper Le Parisien, Mr Zelensky said: “We cannot give up our territories. The Ukrainian constitution forbids us to do so. [But] we do not have the strength to recover them.
“We can only count on diplomatic pressure from the international community to force Putin to sit down at the negotiating table.”
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and controls about 80 per cent of the Donbas, an industrial area that includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“It’s not about who sits across from you; it’s about the position you’re in when negotiating. I don’t believe we’re in a weak position, but we’re also not in a strong one,” Mr Zelensky added.
On the battlefield, Russia has claimed Ukraine repeatedly dropped white phosphorus munitions from drones in September – an accusation Kyiv staunchly denies.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said law enforcement agencies had evidence of the use of such munitions by Ukraine, but she did not provide details.
Ukraine, which has accused Russia of using phosphorus in the war, said Ms Zakharova’s statement was false and accused Russia of using prohibited chemical substances on the battlefield.
Ukraine has also unveiled a laser weapon capable of downing drones from more than a mile away in a bid to combat Russian aerial attacks.
Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said the laser would be capable of downing aircraft at distances of more than 2km.
“It really works; it really exists,” he said at the Europe Defence Industry conference, adding efforts are underway to scale up its capabilities.
The announcement follows the UK introducing a cutting-edge “Trident” laser weapon earlier this year. A spokesperson said at the time it would be sharing its prototypes with Ukraine.
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