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A top Russian general died after a bomb exploded at the entrance to his home in Moscow early Tuesday, killing him and his aide, investigators said.
Russia's Investigative Committee, a major crime unit, said Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the military's nuclear, chemical and biological defense forces, was killed in an explosion caused by a bomb on a scooter.
Kirillov is the most prominent military officer to be assassinated since the founding of Russia The full scale of the invasion of Ukraine In 2022.
Ukraine's SBU security service had issued a "notice of suspicion" — essentially a warrant — for Kirillov a day earlier for alleged "war crimes" against Kiev's forces.
An SBU official declined to comment Tuesday.
Kirillov faced UK sanctions in October for "deploying barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine", including the toxic choking agent chloropicrin.
The UK said Kirillov was also "an important mouthpiece for Kremlin sabotage", a reference to public briefings in which he regularly accused Kiev of using chemical weapons and plotting to develop a nuclear "dirty bomb". Accused of
Mash and 112, two news outlets on the Russian law enforcement social media app Telegram, published a photo of two bodies in the snow outside an apartment building on Moscow's Ryazansky Prospect, surrounded by shards of glass from broken windows. is
Russian news outlets, citing sources in the investigation, said the bomb on the scooter contained between 100 and 300 grams of TNT.
The SBU statement on Monday said Kirillov was "responsible for the widespread use of banned chemical weapons by the Russians against defense forces on Ukraine's eastern and southern fronts".
It accused him of “more than 4,800 counts of the use of chemical weapons by the enemy. [that] Recorded since the start of full-scale war.
Ukrainian soldiers have recounted to the Financial Times instances in which they were attacked with chemical weapons during battles with the Russians.
The US State Department has said that Russia has used the chemical agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces in violation of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Treaty.
Tuesday's bombing marked the work of Ukraine's spy agencies inside Russia, where they have carried out targeted assassinations of key military personnel and sabotage against their enemies' war machine to disrupt Moscow's ongoing offensive. has created a network of secret operatives for
Ukraine's intelligence agencies rarely claim clear credit for killings.
Last year Kirillov also claimed that Ukraine planned to launch special US-made drones carrying "infected mosquitoes" that would spread malaria to Russian troops.