General Kirillov was killed in Moscow. Kiev claimed responsibility for the attack

Russian General Igor Kirillov, commander of the Armed Forces’ nuclear, chemical and biological defense troops, was killed in an attack in Moscowtogether with his assistant. It reports it Tass. They were killed by the explosion of a bomb placed in an electric scooter in Ryazansky Avenue, in the south-east of the Russian capital. Ukrainian security services claimed responsibility for his death. The Russian Investigative Committee denounced the fact as terrorism. And the vice-president of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, threatened imminent revenge.

The fact: the bomb planted in an electric scooter

«On the morning of December 17, an explosive device placed in a scooter exploded near the entrance to a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow – confirmed the spokeswoman of the Russian Investigative Committee, Svetlana Petrenko -. The head of the Russian troops for protection from radiation, chemical and biological agents, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, and his assistant were killed in the explosion.” Petrenko added that the Committee’s Moscow department had opened a criminal investigation into the attack. Ukrainska Pravda published online the photo of an electric scooter among the rubble of the stricken building: according to preliminary information, writes the Ukrainian newspaper, an improvised explosive device had been placed on that scooter. In another image, two people can be seen on the ground, near a car with a shattered windshield; a third photo shows the damaged entrance to the building where Kirillov and the other victim were headed.

The shadow of chemical weapons against Ukraine

Yesterday Kiev’s military intelligence (SBU) disclosed its suspicion that the Russian general had ordered the use of chemical weapons against the Ukrainian defense forces. According to the Kyiv IndependentGeneral Kirillov was convicted yesterday in absentia by a Ukrainian court, as he was found “responsible for the massive use of prohibited chemical weapons in Ukraine”. Kirillov had already been sanctioned in October by the British government for the same reason; an accusation first formulated by the SBU agency, which Moscow has always rejected as “absurd”.

The Russian newspaper Kommersanton its website, immediately accused the Ukrainian secret services of being behind the attack: the general «was not the most important figure in the Russian special operation» in Ukraine, but his killing is «an unprecedented crime committed in Moscow ».