Written by Andrew Osborne
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A top Russian general accused by Ukraine of being responsible for using chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces was assassinated in Moscow using a bomb hidden in an electric motorcycle, Russian investigators said on Tuesday.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates serious crimes, said in a statement that Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, who was the commander of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt along with his aide.
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Pictures posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a broken entrance to a building strewn with rubble and two bodies lying in the blood-stained snow.
Reuters footage from the scene showed a police cordon. Investigators said they had opened a criminal case into the killing of two soldiers. Law enforcement sources told Russian media that the matter would likely be raised into a terrorism case.
Russia denies Ukrainian allegations that it is using chemical weapons on the battlefield, and Kirillov, who is married with two sons, has sometimes appeared on state television accusing Ukraine of violating nuclear safety protocols.
In October, Britain imposed sanctions on Kirillov and his nuclear protection forces for using riot control agents and over multiple reports of the use of the toxic choke agent chloropicrin on the battlefield.
The Kyiv Independent newspaper quoted the Ukrainian Security Service as saying that there was no immediate comment on his killing from Ukraine as prosecutors had reportedly charged Kirilov in absentia with the alleged use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a series of targeted assassinations on its territory since the start of Moscow’s all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022.
High-profile cases include the 2022 killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, in a car bomb attack, the killing of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a 2023 café bombing, and last year’s shooting of a person. The commander of the Russian submarine is accused of war crimes by Kyiv.
The Russian Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, known as RKhBZ, and commanded by Kirillov, are special forces operating under conditions of radiological, chemical and biological contamination and tasked with protecting ground forces operating in harsh conditions.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow; Additional reporting by Lydia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Perry and Andrew Heavens)
