Explosion: Moscow general killed – Secret Service SBU: Legitimate target

According to unofficial information, the death of a prominent Russian general from a bomb in Moscow was attributed to the Ukrainian secret service SBU. General Igor Kirillov was killed when an explosive device hidden in a parked electric scooter was detonated at his home. This was said by the spokeswoman for the National Investigative Committee, Svetlana Petrenko. Kirillov (54) was one of the best-known faces of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. His adjutant was also killed.

The Russian investigators spoke of a terrorist attack and assumed there was a lead in Ukraine. In Kiev, the Ukrainian secret service SBU unofficially claimed the murder as his own. This was reported by several media outlets, including the Interfax Ukraina news agency, citing intelligence sources.

Kiev saw general as a “legitimate target”

“Kirillov was a war criminal and a perfectly legitimate target because he ordered the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers,” an SBU source was quoted as saying. The Ukrainian services often provide unofficial information about their actions. The information cannot be verified.

The Kiev secret service had only accused Kirillov on Monday – a day before the attack – of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. It was about gas grenades that are supposed to drive soldiers out of trenches. Their production and use for military purposes is prohibited by international convention. Russia has repeatedly stated that it has eliminated its chemical weapons.

Kirillov was head of the country’s NBC defense troops and was therefore responsible for protecting against threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He repeatedly made public accusations that the USA was operating secret biolaboratories in the neighboring country.

Putin also relied on Kirillov

In addition, Kirillov, who was considered one of the loudest warmongers in Russia and is on Western sanctions lists, claimed that Ukraine was working on a so-called dirty bomb. Dirty bombs are weapons of mass destruction with conventional explosive devices mixed with radioactive material.

Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has also made such accusations against Ukraine based on Kirillov’s publicly presented reports. There was no evidence of this.

Russia’s chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin took over the investigation into the attack. According to Russian media, the explosive device was allegedly detonated by a signal from a cell phone. Mobile phone connections in the district in the southeast of the capital are being investigated, it said. The explosion occurred when Kirillov left the house in the morning to get a ride to work, investigators said. Accordingly, the general’s movements were also monitored with a camera that was hidden in a car parked at the house.

Multiple bombings in Russia

On the Russian side, there have been attacks on high-ranking military officials and propagandists during the war in the past. The power apparatus in Moscow repeatedly blamed Ukrainian secret services for this; Of these, in turn, there were half confirmations. A Russian rocket designer and the former head of a camp for Ukrainian prisoners of war were also killed recently.

General Kirillov was most likely chosen as a target because of his fame, the Kommersant newspaper wrote. He wanted to speak to journalists again on Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the man killed as a “dauntless fighter.” Kirillov described the chemical weapons attacks blamed on Russia in the civil war in Syria as a NATO provocation and made public the – literally – “deadly activities of American biolaboratories in Ukraine.” In the West, such claims, which Kirillov repeatedly spread without evidence, are rejected as part of Russian war propaganda.

Russia began its war of aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.