Newsman: The head of the Russian army’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops was killed Tuesday in an apparent targeted assassination outside an apartment building in Moscow.
Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off as the two men left a building in a residential area in southeastern Moscow early in the morning, investigators said.
Kirillov is known for his claims about alleged Western bio-laboratories and their possible connection with the spread of infectious diseases, including Covid-19.
He has claimed that Washington planned to provide biological weapons to Ukraine and that this would include targeting Russian troops with malaria-infected mosquitos.
He has also repeatedly accused Kyiv of using chemical weapons. In October 2024, he claimed that the Ukrainian military used Western-made chemical weapons in the Kyiv-held town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region.
Since 2022, Kirillov has also repeatedly claimed without evidence that Kyiv was developing a “dirty bomb” — a conventional weapon that would spread nuclear material.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Russian security official, told a meeting shown on state TV that Moscow would avenge what he called an act of terrorism.
“Law enforcement agencies must find the killers in Russia,” said Medvedev. “Everything must be done to destroy the masterminds (of the killing) who are in Kyiv. We know who these masterminds are. They are the military and political leadership of Ukraine,” he said.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, speaking to Russian news agencies, dismissed a comment from the U.S. State Department that Washington had no connection to the killing or any prior knowledge of it.
The United States, she said, “created the Kyiv regime, sponsors it, provides money and sends weapons endlessly. The proof is clear: Washington has not once condemned a single terrorist act or planned murder committed by the Kyiv regime.”
Kirillov is the most senior Russian military official killed since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, 54, headed the Russian military’s radiological, chemical and biological defense forces since 2017.The unit does not oversee Russia’s nuclear weapons.
The U.K. sanctioned him and his unit in October over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, describing him as a “significant mouthpiece for Russian disinformation.”
He was killed a day after Ukraine charged him in absentia on allegations of committing “war crimes” against Ukraine.
Moscow has denied deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said Kirillov and his assistant were killed after “an explosive device planted in a scooter parked near the entrance of a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow,” about seven kilometers southeast of the Kremlin.
The state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported, citing a source, that the explosive device had an estimated power equivalent to 200 grams of TNT.
Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case regarding the killing of two servicemen but did not name any potential suspects.
Sources within Ukraine’s SBU security service told BBC Ukraine and AFP that the explosion targeting Kirillov was the result of an SBU special operation.
According to the sources, an explosive-laden scooter was detonated as Kirillov and his aide exited a residential building on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and a completely legitimate target, as he issued orders to use banned chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces,” the source told BBC.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kirillov had been “systematically exposing the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons for many years, with facts in hand.”
Zakharova also accused Ukraine’s Western allies of being “accomplices” to the brazen assassination in Moscow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of the Security Council, wrote that “The leadership of the Kyiv regime will pay in full” for Kirillov’s death.
Russia denies Ukrainian allegations it uses chemical weapons on the battlefield and Kirillov, who was married with two sons, was himself sometimes shown on state TV giving briefings at the Defence Ministry in which he accused Ukraine of violating nuclear safety protocols or the West of various alleged crimes.
Suspect detained in death of Russian general
Russia said on Wednesday it had detained a citizen of Uzbekistan who had confessed to planting and detonating a bomb that killed Lt. General Igor Kirillov in Moscow a day earlier on the instructions of Ukraine’s security service.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said in a statement on Wednesday that the unnamed suspect had told them he had come to Moscow to carry out an assignment for Ukraine’s intelligence services.
He describes how he had placed the device on the electric scooter, which he had parked outside the entrance of the apartment block where Kirillov lived.
Investigators cited him as saying that he had set up a surveillance camera in a hire car nearby and that the organizers of the assassination, who he was cited as saying had been based in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, had used the camera to watch what was going on.
He says Ukraine had offered him $100,000 for his role in the murder and residency in a European country.
