MOSCOW: A top Russian general accused by Ukraine on Monday of being responsible for the use of banned chemical weapons against its troops was assassinated in Moscow on Tuesday morning in the most high-profile killing of its kind since the beginning of the war.
Lieutenant general Igor Kirillov (54), who was chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside an apartment building along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter was remotely triggered.
A source in Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service confirmed that it was behind the audacious hit.
Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev said Ukraine’s military and political brass face imminent “revenge” for Kirillov’s murder.
General highest-profile military official killed inside Russia since war
Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, has claimed responsibility for killing Lt General Igor Kirillov, 54, who was in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, in a bombing in Moscow.
The bomb used in Tuesday’s attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork. The killing was the highest-profile apparent assassination of a Russian military official far from the battlefield since the start of the 2022 invasion. While other Russian generals have died in occupied Ukraine or near front line, he is the highest-ranking military official to have been killed inside Russia.
An official with the SBU, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.” On Monday, Kirillov was charged in absentia by the SBU for “ordering the use of banned chemical weapons against Ukraine’s Defense Forces.” Kirillov was under sanctions from several countries, including the UK and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in Feb 2022. In May, the US state department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in WWI, against Ukrainian troops. Russia has denied it, and has in turn accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances – claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda. Kirillov, who once headed a Russian military academy, was prominent in Russia’s propaganda campaign against Ukraine and the West. In 2023, for instance, he said that the US was planning to use drones “designed to spread infected mosquitoes.”
As the head of Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defence forces, Kirillov helped develop a thermobaric rocket launcher, the TOS-2. The Russian military frequently reports its use in Ukraine.
The SBU official provided video that they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame. Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism.
Since Russia invaded, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks believed to have been carried out by Ukraine. Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car blast that investigators suspected was aimed at her father. Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. In Dec 2023, Illia Kyva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. On Dec 9, a bomb planted under a car in the Russian-occupied Donetsk city killed Sergei Yevsyukov, the ex-head of a prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022.
Russian Nuclear Chief’s Final Moments On Cam: Watch How Ukraine Assassinated Kirillov
Trump says letting Kyiv use long-range US missiles stupid, may reverse decision
US Presidentelect Donald Trump on Monday suggested that he may reverse President Joe Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukrainian forces to use American longrange weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory.
Trump called the decision made by Biden last month “stupid”. He also expressed anger that his incoming administration was not consulted before Biden made the move. With the loosening of the restrictions, Biden gave Ukraine long-sought permission to use the Army Tactical Missile System provided by the US to strike Russian positions hundreds miles from its border.
“I don’t think that should have been allowed, not when there’s a possibility — certainly not just weeks before I take over,” Trump said during at a wideranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort. “Why would they do that without asking me what I thought? I wouldn’t have had him do that. I think it was a big mistake.”
Asked if he would consider reversing the Biden administration decision, Trump responded: “I might. I think it was a very stupid thing to do.”
The White House pushed back on Trump’s criticism, noting that the decision was made after months of deliberations.
Trump on Monday reiterated his call on both Ukrainian President Zelensky and Russian President Putin to negotiate an end to the war
Now, Nato and not US, to handle coordination of military aid to Kyiv
Nato has taken over the coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the US, as planned, a source said on Tuesday, in a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against Nato sceptic Donald Trump.
The step gives Nato a more direct role in the war against Russia’s invasion while stopping well short of committing its own forces.
Diplomats, however, acknowledge that the handover to Nato may have a limited effect given that the US under Trump could still deal a major setback to Ukraine by slashing its support as it is the alliance’s dominant power and provides the majority of arms to Kyiv.