“Kirillov was a war criminal and a completely legitimate target because he ordered the use of banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army,” the source continued.
The SBU had officially accused Kirillov the day before of a “war crime” for having ordered, according to kyiv, the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in eastern and southern Ukraine. Claims that AFP was unable to verify.
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 American biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine”, of which Moscow accused Washington, Kommersant recalls, by affirming that the Ukrainian special services were behind this assassination.
Sanctioned for “deployment of barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”
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.”
Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, more than 4,800 cases of use of “chemical munitions” by the Russian army have been recorded, the SBU said in a press release.
These are most often grenades with toxic substances having irritant effects that Russian forces launched, according to kyiv, at Ukrainian positions in order to force soldiers to come out in front of Russian fire, according to the same source.
“More than 2,000 military personnel” from Ukraine had to be hospitalized with varying degrees of chemical poisoning during the same period, according to the Ukrainian SBU.
Putin also targeted?
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”.
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