Russia holds man over b0mb ass@ssination of senior general relocation to Europe by Ukraine

Military authorities in Russia said it had detained a man from Uzbekistan over the killing of a senior Russian general and his assistant in Moscow on Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who headed Russia’s radiological, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted in an electric scooter outside his apartment building.

The blast came a day after Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Kirillov in absentia for Russia’s use of banned chemical weapons during its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, was reportedly behind the attack.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect was recruited by the SBU and acting on its instructions. It claimed that the suspect had been offered a reward of $100,000 in cash and the chance to flee and live in a European country.

“The detainee received a homemade explosive device and placed it on an electric scooter which he parked at the entrance to the residential building where Igor Kirillov lived,” the committee said.

The suspect had rented a car and fitted it with a surveillance camera to monitor Kirillov’s residence, it added.

The footage was monitored by the attack’s organizers in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro, it said, who remotely detonated the bomb when they saw Kirillov and his assistant leave the building on Ryazansky Street early Tuesday morning.

Kirilov, aged 54, was the most senior military official known to be killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A source in Ukraine’s SBU told CNN that Kirillov’s “inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians” and that “retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”

Kirillov’s assassination struck not only at the core of Russia’s military but close to the heart of the nation’s capital, just 7 kilometres (4 miles) from the Kremlin. His death marked the fourth killing of key military figures on Russian soil in the last two months alone.

Russian state media identified the suspect as Akhmad Kurbanov and published a video of him – recorded by Russia’s spy agency, the FSB – seeming to confess to planting the bomb that killed Kirillov. It was not clear whether the individual was speaking under duress.

In a press briefing Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Kirillov’s assassination shows Ukraine “does not shy away from using terrorist methods.”

A source in Ukraine’s SBU told CNN on Tuesday that Kirillov “was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, as he gave orders to use banned chemical substances against the Ukrainian military.”

A day before his killing, the SBU said that, on Kirillov’s orders, Russia had used more than 4,800 cases of chemical munitions since the war began. CNN has previously reported on Russia’s use of tear gas as a weapon in Ukraine.