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A top Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a motorcycle outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security agency filed criminal charges against him.
A Ukrainian official said the country’s security service carried out the attack. Lieutenant General. Igor Kirillov, head of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office.
Kirillov’s assistant was also killed in the bombing, which was activated remotely, according to Russian media reports. Images from the scene showed broken windows and charred, 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 (SBU) opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
An SBU official told the Associated Press it was behind the attack. An SBU official made a similar claim to the Reuters news agency.
The SBU has said it has recorded more than 4,800 occasions in which Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its large-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the US State Department said in a statement that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison. Gas was first used in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.
Russia has denied using chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Russia’s Medvedev vows immediate revenge
Kirillov, who took up his current position in 2017, was one of the most prominent figures to make those accusations. 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 rejected as propaganda.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said on Tuesday that Ukrainian leaders would face imminent revenge for the assassination, the RIA news agency reported, accusing Ukraine of “cowardly and despicable attacks.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.
WATCH l Prolonged war puts pressure on Russian economy and businessmen: 
The Russian central bank is forecast to raise its benchmark interest rate to 23 percent this month, and military spending will consume a third of Russia’s total budget. Andrew Chang explains how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine is causing inflation to soar and what that means for civilians.
Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian television channels and daughter of nationalist ideologue linked to the Kremlin, Alexander Dugin, has died. in a car bomb in 2022 which investigators suspected was directed at his father.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in Saint Petersburg in April 2023. when a statuette they gave him at a party exploded. In the case, a Russian woman was convicted who claimed to have given the figure as a gift on the orders of a contact in Ukraine. and they imposed a sentence of 27 years.
In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot dead near Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence praised the assassination and warned that other “traitors of Ukraine” would suffer the same fate.
On the battlefield, RIA reported that Russian forces took control of the Hannivka settlement in eastern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report.
The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday it had shot down 20 drones launched by Russia.
He said on the Telegram messenger that Russia launched a total of 31 drones and an additional 10 missed their targets. One was still in the air.
