A senior Russian general was killed by a bomb hidden on a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow on Tuesday, a day after Ukraine's security agency brought criminal charges against him.

A Ukrainian official said the country's security service carried out the attack. the lieutenant general Igor Kirillov, the head of the army's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed on his way to his office.

Kirillov's assistant was also killed in the attack, which was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Pictures from the scene showed broken windows and burnt and blackened bricks.

Kirillov was under sanctions from several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, for his actions in Moscow's war in Ukraine. On Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

An SBU official told the Associated Press that he was behind the attack. An SBU official made a similar claim to the Reuters news agency.

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 February 2022. In May, the US State Department said in a statement who had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison. gas deployed for the first time in the First World War, against Ukrainian troops.

Russia has denied using chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kiev of using toxic agents in combat.

Russia's Medvedev promises immediate revenge

Kirillov, who took up his current job in 2017, was one of the most prominent figures to raise these allegations. 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 dismissed as propaganda.

Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian president and current vice chairman of Russia's Security Council, said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian leadership would face imminent revenge for the killing, the RIA news agency reported, accusing Ukraine of "attacks cowards and despicable".

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.

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Darya Dugina, commentator for Russian television channels and daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, has died. in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was directed at his father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in St. Petersburg in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party exploded. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine at the behest of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted in the case. and sentenced to 27 years.

In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian MP who fled to Russia, was shot dead near Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence praised the killing and warned that other "traitors of Ukraine" would meet the same fate.

On the battlefield, RIA reported that Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Hannivka in eastern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report.

Ukraine's air force said on Tuesday it had shot down 20 drones launched by Russia.

He told the Telegram messenger that Russia launched a total of 31 drones and another 10 missed their targets. One was still in the air.