The explosion took place at 6 a.m. in Moscow, before daybreak on Tuesday, December 17. General Igor Kirillov was leaving his home, located on a main boulevard in the Russian capital, when he was killed, along with his adjutant Ilia Polikarpov, by a heavy explosive charge placed, according to the first elements of the investigation, in the battery compartment of a scooter parked in the entrance to his building, we learn in the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. Both men died instantly.
General Igor Kirillov was the commander of the radionuclide, chemical and biological defense forces. He is the highest-ranking Russian officer to have died in an attack since the start of the war in Ukraine. The operation was claimed later in the morning by Ukraine's internal security service, the SBU, an official of whom, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the kyiv online newspaper Ukrainian Truth, that his men were behind this operation. “Kirillov was a war criminal and a perfectly legitimate target,” said this source. An interlocutor within the SBU, visibly the same, confirmed this information to several international media, including the agency
