Residents of an apartment building on Ryazanki Prospekt in Moscow heard an explosion Tuesday morning and saw two bodies on the ground when they looked out their windows.
The Russian Investigative Committee later confirmed that the victims were senior general Igor Kirillov and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov.
Reactions in Moscow and Kyiv
Investigators said the bomb was planted in an electric scooter placed next to the entrance of the apartment building. The explosion occurred when two people were leaving the building. Kirillov was said to have been monitored by a camera installed in a car-sharing vehicle near his home shortly before his murder.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case, investigating allegations of terrorism, murder and illegal weapons trafficking. Russian media, citing sources in the Investigative Committee, reported that authorities suspected Ukrainian intelligence services of organizing the explosion.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kirillov had “spent years systematically exposing the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons.” State Duma representative Yevgeny Revenko accused Ukraine of carrying out the operation, saying “the Kyiv regime…showed its criminal nature.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied accusations linking Kiev to the blast.
Tuesday’s explosion came a day after the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) accused Kirillov of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian armed forces in his absence.
tarnishing Assad’s reputation
Kirillov’s public career began in 2017 when he was appointed commander of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces. Later that year, Kirillov became a spokesman for the Russian government regarding a chemical attack that killed dozens of people in the Syrian city of Douma in April 2017.
At the time, the United States, Britain and France accused the regime of then-President Bashar Assad of carrying out the attack and attacked several government targets in Syria in response. At a press conference in The Hague organized by Russia and Syria, Kirillov claimed that the chemical attack had been staged.
According to him, some samples taken from the scene were deliberately laced with the poisonous compound sarin – a claim that has never been independently proven.
False claims about dangerous biological laboratories in Ukraine
The briefings became more frequent, with Kirillov as the keynote speaker in The Hague after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In his speeches, Kirillov accused the United States of building laboratories in Ukraine for biological development. Weapons for use against Russia.
According to Kirillov, the US planned to use drones to deliver mosquitoes infected with the yellow fever virus to areas where Russian troops were deployed. He did not provide any evidence in support of the allegation. He also provided no evidence for his statement that the increase in bird flu cases in Russia was due to the migration of infected birds from Ukraine.
During his briefing, Kirillov claimed that the Ukrainian military used toxic substances on the front lines and carried out terrorist attacks. One of his latest claims, in August this year, was that Ukraine was ready to use so-called dirty bombs to spread radioactive material on its territory.
Why Kirillov?
German political scientist and Russia expert Hans-Henning Schröder said he sees Kirillov’s false claims as propaganda used to justify Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. Schröder said that Kirillov’s aim was to convince Russians inside and outside Russia that Ukraine was dangerous and that the Russian invasion had succeeded in thwarting Kiev’s nefarious plans for Russia.
Schröder reported that Kirillov’s role as a propagandist may have attracted the attention of Ukrainian intelligence services. Schröder said that, otherwise, Kirillov would have had little interest in Ukraine’s intelligence services because he did not command troops operationally and was not responsible for deploying units or weapons systems.
‘Demolition action’
Several media outlets, citing SBU sources, said that the Security Service of Ukraine had indeed claimed responsibility for Kirillov’s murder. If this is true, it should not be treated as a terrorist attack, according to Oleksiy Melnik, who runs the foreign policy and international security program at the Razumkov Center in Kiev.
“When two states are at war and an active duty soldier of the opposing army is killed, it should be classified as an act of sabotage,” Melnik said.
There are other possible suspects in the blast outside the SBU.
Melnick and Schroder said that corporate or interagency conflict may have been behind Kirillov’s murder. Schröder said Kirillov’s killing could also be seen in the context of a purge in Russia’s Defense Ministry (MOD) that began after Putin fired former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu last May.
“One can certainly imagine a resource conflict, where one group plots against another,” Schröder said, “however, so far, we have actually not heard about violent clashes between rival criminal groups within the Ministry of Defense.” I know very little.”
Edited by: Sean M. Sinico
