A bomb placed inside a scooter parked outside a residential building in Moscow detonated Tuesday, killing a Russian general with a senior role in the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs and his aide, in one of the most brazen attacks since the Kremlin launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine nearly three years ago.
Ukraine has reportedly claimed responsibility for the assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces.
Ukraine’s security service, known as the SBU, said the Russian general was responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons by Russian forces along multiple fronts in Ukraine.
“By order of Kirillov, more than 4,800 cases of enemy use of chemical weapons have been recorded since the beginning of the full-scale war,” the SBU said in a statement on its Telegram social media page the day before the attack. “In particular, we are talking about K-1 combat grenades, which are equipped with toxic irritants — CS and CN.”
More than 2,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been hospitalized with “varying degrees of chemical poisoning” since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the statement claimed.
“When grenades with a chemical charge are activated, their poisonous compounds affect the mucus membranes of a person, primarily the eyes and respiratory tract,” the SBU said. “In this way, the [Russians] are trying to force the Ukrainian soldiers to come out of the trenches under the direct fire of the occupiers.”
Moscow has launched an investigation into the attack.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council and a longtime adviser to President Vladimir Putin, warned that Kyiv would “pay dearly” for the death of Gen. Kirillov.
“This terrorist attack demonstrates the agony of the Banderite regime, which is struggling to justify its shaky existence in the eyes of its Western patrons and prolong the deadly hostilities while delivering cowardly attacks on civilians in cities and towns,” Mr. Medvedev said Tuesday, according to Russia’s official TASS news agency.
The term “Banderite” refers to World War II figure Stepan Bandera, a highly controversial figure in Ukraine hailed by some as a nationalist hero. In contrast, others consider him a Nazi collaborator whose forces were responsible for the massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.
According to the official Tass news service, the 54-year-old general graduated from the Kostroma Higher Military Command School of Chemical Defense in 1991 and the Marshal Semyon Timoshenko NBC Protection Military Academy in 2007, and has served as chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops since April 2017.
Gen. Kirillov had worked since his appointment to “present evidence exposing crimes committed by the Anglo-Saxons and NATO,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel Tuesday.
But an SBU official told the Kyiv Post Tuesday that the general was a “legitimate target” in the war.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and a legitimate target. He was responsible for ordering the use of prohibited chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces,” the SBU source said. “This is the fate awaiting all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”