A senior Russian army official was killed Tuesday morning in an explosion near a residential building in the southeast of Moscow, announced the Russian Investigative Committee, responsible for the main investigations in the country.
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“The commander of the Russian radionuclear, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov, and his assistant were killed” in the explosion caused by the triggering of an explosive device, the committee said in a statement.
General Kirillov, sanctioned in October by London for alleged deployment of chemical weapons in Ukraine, is the most senior Russian military official to have been killed in Moscow since the start of the Russian offensive against its Ukrainian neighbor in February 2022.
According to investigators, the explosive device was placed on a scooter parked near the entrance to a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow.
According to an AFP journalist on site, the windows of several apartments were broken by the explosion, and large police cordons were deployed around them.
The entrance to the building was seriously damaged.
“A criminal investigation into the assassination of the two soldiers in Moscow has been opened,” said the Investigative Committee, adding that investigators are in the process of establishing “all the circumstances” of the facts.
“An unprecedented crime has been committed in Moscow,” reacted the Russian daily Kommersant on its site.
General Kirillov “was not the leader of the most important participant in the Russian special operation” in Ukraine, the newspaper believes.
“But it was he who spoke, during his briefings, about the American biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine”, of which Moscow accused Washington, Kommersant recalls, by affirming that the Ukrainian special services were behind this assassination.
The spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, deplored, on Telegram, the loss of a “intrepid” general, who never hid behind the backs of others”, fighting “for the Fatherland and for the truth.”
For his part, the vice-president of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, promised on Telegram that “the murderers will be punished. Without doubt and without pity.
In office since April 2017, Igor Kirillov was sanctioned in October by the United Kingdom for “deploying barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”.
Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected these accusations, calling them “absurd.”
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took stock of the 2024 fighting in Ukraine, during a meeting with Defense Ministry officials, welcoming the pace of the advance of his troops and having “the initiative » across the entire front at the end of this “pivotal year”.
“According to one suggestion, the attack could have been prepared for this meeting at the Ministry of Defense with the participation of Vladimir Putin,” says Kommersant.
“But for whatever reasons, we decided to postpone it for the next day,” adds the newspaper.
