A senior Russian army official was killed this Tuesday morning in an explosion near a residential building in the southeast of Moscow, a rare attack claimed by kyiv in the midst of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
“Today’s bomb attack against Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of the radiological, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, is a special operation of the SBU,” Ukrainian security services said. The 54-year-old is to date the most senior Russian military official to have been killed since the start of the offensive in February 2022.
“The commander of the Russian radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov, and his assistant were killed” in the explosion caused by the triggering of an explosive device, announced the Russian Investigative Committee, which opened an investigation for “assassination”, “attack” and “arms trafficking”.
A “massive use of chemical weapons”
According to Russian 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 a cordon of police was deployed around them.
In office since April 2017, Igor Kirillov was sanctioned in October by the United Kingdom for “deploying barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”. On Monday, on the eve of the general’s assassination, the Ukrainian security services (SBU) accused him, in a press release, of being responsible for “massive use of chemical weapons” against Ukrainian forces.
Since February 2022, more than 4,800 cases of use of “chemical munitions” by the Russian army have been recorded, the SBU assured. Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected these accusations, calling them “absurd.”
