Bomb kills Russian nuke commander
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal, was accused of using poison gas on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, a Russian general in charge of the country's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, was killed Tuesday by what officials described as a bomb hidden in a scooter outside a Moscow apartment building.
Kirillov had been accused by Kyiv and its Western allies of using chemical weapons in Ukraine.
The general's assistant also was reported killed in the blast, according to Russia's Investigative Committee, a federal law enforcement agency. Investigators and forensic workers were still collecting evidence at the scene, but Russia state media said the bomb, remotely operated, was detonated as Kirillov was leaving the apartment block.
There was no public claim of responsibility for the blast, which damaged the first four floors of the residential building on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow. But media reports in Ukraine, citing the country's domestic security service, known as SBU, suggested Kirillov's killing was a special operation carried out by Kyiv. If that's confirmed, it would be a rare targeted assassination of a high-profile military commander inside Russia.
Kirillov was a controversial figure in the West, sanctioned by the United Kingdom over allegations he oversaw the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine as part of Russia's invasion. Among the allegations against him was that he authorized the use of the toxic choking agent chloropicrin on the battlefield. On Monday, Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court over the use of banned chemical weapons. Russia denies the accusations.
Maria Zakharov, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, sought to defend Kirillov in a statement published on Telegram on Tuesday. She said Kirillov had "worked fearlessly" for the "Motherland, for the truth."
Ukraine has been suspected of carrying out targeted assassinations against Russian officials, military commanders and propagandists during the nearly 3-year-old war. Its security services are believed, for example, to be behind a car bombing near Moscow in August 2022 that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. Dugina’s father, Aleksandr Dugin, was one of Russia’s most prominent voices urging Moscow to intensify its war on Ukraine, and officials suspect that he, not his daughter, may have been the actual target.
In an exclusive interview with Paste BN in June 2022, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo O. Budanov, Ukraine's top military spy, disclosed that Ukrainian operatives were hunting Russian military personnel who they believe to be responsible for war crimes in Ukraine. "Amid the fog of war sometimes the Russians cannot clearly differentiate if a person just died in a battle or if there's been a targeted assassination," Budanov said of these activities, a rare admission.
Budanov said that such operations also had taken place inside Russia, successfully targeting midranking Russian officers, and that two months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin survived a Ukrainian-directed assassination attempt. Budanov said the attempt on Putin's life took place in the Caucus region, an area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The incident was not reported at the time, he said. A spokesperson for Budanov did not immediately return a request for comment on Kirillov's killing Tuesday.
President-elect Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail he would swiftly end the war between Ukraine and Russia. On Monday, he indicated he may reverse President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukrainian forces to use American long-range weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory. Trump called Biden's decision "stupid."