“An explosive device placed in a scooter parked near the entrance to a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow”indicated Tuesday September 17 the Russian Investigative Committee, responsible for the main investigations in the country, in a press release. “The commander of the Russian radionuclear, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov, and his assistant were killed” following the explosion.
The entrance to the building was seriously damaged and the windows of several apartments were broken, according to images published by Russian media.
Sanctioned by the United Kingdom
“A criminal investigation into the assassination of the two soldiers in Moscow has been opened”according to the Russian Investigative Committee. Investigators were dispatched to the scene and examinations are underway to establish “all circumstances” of the incident, according to the same source.
Shortly afterwards, in the morning, the Ukrainian security services (SBU) claimed responsibility for this explosion and the assassination of Igor Kirillov.
“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,” the source within this structure told AFP.
According to her, the explosion occurred as the general and his assistant entered the building.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and a completely legitimate target because he ordered the use of banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army,” continued this source.
The SBU had officially accused Kirillov the day before of “war crime” for having ordered, according to kyiv, the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in eastern and southern Ukraine. Claims that theAFP could not verify.
More than 2,000 soldiers poisoned
In office since April 2017, Igor Kirillov was sanctioned in October by the United Kingdom for “deployment of barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”. His assassination comes in the middle of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, underway since February 2022. He is the most senior Russian military official to have been killed in Moscow since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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 identified, 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 soldiers” Ukrainians had to be hospitalized with varying degrees of chemical poisoning during the same period, again according to the Ukrainian SBU.
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