Russian general accused of war crimes in Ukraine killed in Moscow explosion

A senior Russian general has been killed in an explosion in Moscow after a bomb was hidden in an electric scooter, Russian officials have said.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s nuclear protection forces, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt, about four miles south-east of the Kremlin, early on Tuesday.

His assistant also died, Russia’s Investigative Committee said, adding it had “opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen. Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene.

“Investigative actions and operational search activities are being carried out aimed at establishing all the circumstances of the crime.”

A source in Ukraine’s secret service, the SBU, claimed that it was responsible for the killing as part of a special operation in Moscow, Reuters reported.

Reuters said it could not independently verify the claim. The source said Kyiv regarded Kirillov as a war criminal and an “absolutely legitimate target”.

Ukraine has accused the general of ordering the use of prohibited chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces in the war.

The UK placed sanctions on Kirillov in October, accusing the commander of overseeing the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and acting as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

At the time, the UK said Russian forces had “openly admitted to using hazardous chemical weapons on the battlefield” – including “the toxic choking agent chloropicrin”, which was first used in World War One.

The Kremlin had previously called accusations of using chloropicrin “baseless”.

The UK said Kirillov was “responsible for helping deploy these barbaric weapons”, and has sanctioned all his troops from the Radiological, Biological, Chemical Defence Forces.

Ukraine suspected of assassinating prominent Russians

During the near three-year-long war, Russia has blamed Ukraine for a string of high-profile assassinations of notable Russian figures on its soil.

In 2022, US intelligence agencies determined that Kyiv was behind the car bomb attack that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of far-right Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin.

Russia has accused Ukraine of the murder of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a 2023 cafe bombing, and the shooting last year of Stanislav Rzhitsky, a Russian submarine commander accused of war crimes by Kyiv.

Ukraine has also been linked to targeted attacks on Russian officers and officials in occupied Ukrainian territory.

In November, a senior Russian naval officer, Valery Trankovsky, who had been accused of war crimes by Ukraine, was killed in a car bombing Crimea. A Ukrainian security source told AFP news agency that the assassination was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence.

Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack in October that killed Andrei Korotkiy, an employee at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

In April, a car bomb in the eastern Luhansk region killed Valery Chaika, a Moscow-appointed government official, five months after another Russian-installed politician in Luhansk, Mikhail Filiponenko, died in similar circumstances.

The sanction meant any assets he had in the UK would be frozen, and he was banned from coming to the UK. He’s also been sanctioned by Canada and New Zealand.

On Monday, the SBU filed charges against Kirillov in absentia, saying on Telegram that he was “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons” during Russia’s war with Ukraine.

During the almost three-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.

The SBU alleges that chemical weapons have been used in the country more than 4,800 times since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

They have charged him with committing a war crime. “The pre-trial investigation is ongoing to document other facts of violations of international humanitarian law,” the SBU said on Monday.

According to the SBU, Russian forces drop chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers with drones. The “chemical grenades” release poison gases that irritate eyes and the respiratory system.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.