Russia announced on Wednesday that it had arrested a man from Uzbekistan in connection with the killing of a senior Russian general and his assistant in Moscow the previous day.
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's radiological, biological, and chemical protection forces, was killed by a remotely detonated bomb placed in an electric scooter outside his apartment building.
The attack occurred a day after Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Kirillov in absentia for Russia's use of banned chemical weapons in its invasion of Ukraine. A source later told CNN that Ukraine's security service, the SBU, was behind the bombing.
Russia's Investigative Committee stated that the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect was recruited by the SBU and acted on its orders. The committee claimed the suspect was promised a $100,000 cash reward and the opportunity 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 Investigative Committee added that the suspect had rented a car and equipped it with a surveillance camera to monitor Kirillov's residence. The footage was reviewed by the attack's organizers in Ukraine's eastern city of Dnipro, who remotely detonated the bomb when they saw Kirillov and his assistant leave the building on Ryazansky Street early Tuesday morning.
Kirillov, 54, was the highest-ranking military official known to have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A source within Ukraine's SBU told CNN that Kirillov's "inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians" and emphasized that "retribution for war crimes is inevitable."
His assassination not only targeted Russia's military leadership but also struck close to the heart of the nation, occurring just 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the Kremlin. It marked the fourth killing of a prominent military figure on Russian soil in the past two months.
