MOSCOW (AP) — An explosive device placed near a building in Moscow killed the head of Russia’s nuclear and chemical forces early Tuesday, officials said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the bomb, triggered by the device placed in a scooter, killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov and his aide.
Kirillov, appointed head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces in April 2017, was under sanctions from several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, for his role in Ukraine.
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The bomb was detonated remotely and had a power equivalent to around 300g of TNT, Russia’s official Tass news agency reported, citing unnamed emergency service sources.
Images from the scene broadcast by state television showed broken windows and burnt and blackened bricks.
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working on site,” committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. Investigation and research activities are underway to establish all the circumstances of this crime.
She also said Moscow considered the attack a terrorist attack.
Ukraine’s security services, the SBU, accused Kirillov on December 16 of using banned chemical weapons during the Russian military operation in Ukraine that began in February 2022.
In May, the US State Department also said in a statement that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a chemical weapon first used during World War I, against Ukrainian troops. The SBU also said it has recorded more than 4,800 battlefield uses of chemical weapons since February 2022, including K-1 combat grenades.
Tuesday’s attack is not the first targeting a Russian official.
On December 9, an explosive device was placed under a car in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk, apparently targeting Sergei Yevsyukov, the director of the Olenivka prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022. Another was injured in the explosion.
Russia’s Federal Security Service announced Sunday that a suspect had been arrested and charged with detonating the device.
During the nearly three-year operation, Russia made modest but steady territorial gains in nearly a fifth of Ukraine that it already controls.
