He is the highest-ranking Russian military official to be killed in Moscow since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine 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.
“An unprecedented crime”
“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 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, upper house of the Russian Parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, promised on Telegram that “the murderers will be punished. Without doubt and without pity.”
