Russia detains suspect in killing of general, blames Ukraine

Greg Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Dec 18, 2024

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Russian authorities detained an Uzbekistan national on suspicion of killing a top general in a Moscow bomb attack, and said he’d been recruited by Ukrainian security services to carry out the assassination.

The detainee was promised $100,000 and safe passage to a European country if he helped plant the explosive device that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, the Investigative Committee in Moscow said in a statement Wednesday on Telegram.

Kirillov and his assistant were killed when the bomb planted on a scooter detonated near the entrance to an apartment building in Moscow on Tuesday. He is the most senior Russian commander to be assassinated deep inside Russia since the Kremlin began its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Uzbek citizen received the device on instructions from Ukrainian agents and placed it on the scooter, according to the Investigative Committee. He also rented a car to install a video surveillance camera that was used by organizers of the attack to monitor the entrance to the building from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and to detonate the device remotely, it said.

The assassination came a day after Ukraine’s SBU security service had accused Kirillov of ordering the “massive use” of banned chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in the country’s east and south, saying there had been more than 4,800 cases in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Ukraine hasn’t commented on the detention so far. A person in Ukraine familiar with the operation who spoke on condition of anonymity on Tuesday said the SBU was behind the killing.

Russia’s Federal Security Service said it was part of a joint operation with the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry to detain the suspect. Other people involved in organizing the killing were still being identified, the Investigative Committee said.

Kirillov was known to the Russian public from his regular briefings at the Defense Ministry. The general was sanctioned by the U.K. in October for the use of chemical weapons. The U.K. also accused Kirillov of “spreading lies to mask Russia’s shameful and dangerous behaviour.”

The force Kirillov commanded produces some of the Kremlin’s deadliest weapons, from nerve agents and poisons to the Solntsepyok multiple rocket launcher, which uses both a flamethrower and thermobaric shock.

Dmitry Medvedev, former president and deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, on Tuesday threatened “punishment” for Ukraine’s “top military and political leaders” in retaliation for the killing, according to the state-run Tass news service.