Russia detains suspect over killing of general in Moscow bomb blast
18 December 2024, 10:54
The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Russia’s security service said that it has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.
The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was killed on Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service levelled criminal charges against him.
His assistant also died in the attack.
A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, did not name the suspect, but said he was born in 1995.
According to a statement by the FSB, the suspect said himself that he was recruited by Ukrainian special services.
The Associated Press cannot confirm the conditions under which the suspect spoke to the security services.
The FSB said the suspect had been promised a reward of 100,000 dollars and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Lt Gen Kirillov.
The agency stated that acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect travelled to Moscow, where he picked up a homemade explosive device.
He placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance to the residential building where Kirillov lived.
The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed the scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
Once Lt Gen Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb.
The suspect faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, the FSB said.
The suspect was detained in a village in the Moscow region, according to Ministry of Internal Affairs official Irina Volk, who was quoted by Russian state news agency TASS.
Lt Gen Kirillov, 54, was the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including the UK and Canada, for his actions in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Lt Gen Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations.
He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
An official with the SBU said on Tuesday that the agency was behind the attack.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Lt Gen Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target”.
The SBU official provided video that they said was of the bombing.
It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame.
Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s looking into Lt Gen Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it was “obvious” that Ukraine was behind Lt Gen Kirillov’s killing.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kyiv “does not shy away from terrorist methods”.
