Igor Kirillov: Quick arrest after bomb attack on general

The Russian domestic secret service FSB says it has arrested a suspect one day after the fatal bomb attack on Russian General Igor Kirillov. The man from Uzbekistan confessed that he was recruited by the Ukrainian secret service SBU and received the explosive device. The FSB announced this in Moscow. This information cannot be independently verified.

The Russian authorities are under considerable pressure to quickly solve the crime in the middle of Moscow. Kirillov was head of the Russian troops for protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. On Tuesday morning he was killed by an explosive device in front of his home in the capital. His adjutant also died. Russian investigators spoke of terror and immediately assumed an act by Ukrainian secret services. In Kiev, the SBU let it be known unofficially that the attack was its fault.

Media in the Russian capital reported the day after the attack that two suspects had been arrested. The authorities were able to identify their cars through surveillance cameras at the crime scene, the newspapers “Kommersant” and “Izvestia” and the portal “RBK” reported.

According to Russian intelligence, the suspected assassin is said to have placed a small Wi-Fi camera in a car that was parked at Kirillov’s house. This meant that Ukrainian officers could have monitored the general’s movements from a distance. They were also the ones who remotely detonated the bomb hidden in an electric scooter. The attacker was promised $100,000 and travel to the EU for the crime.

Ukraine has allegedly carried out several attacks on propagandists of the Russian war of aggression. However, the killing of a general in the middle of Moscow, which inevitably leaves traces, is unusual. It shows that the Ukrainian services felt confident in their cause.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the investigators’ work. “Not much time has passed, but a lot is already known.” In his opinion, the attack was clearly the work of Ukraine. “We know who ordered this terrorist attack, we are fighting with this Nazi regime and will continue the fight,” he said, according to the state news agency Tass.

As Peskov explained, the attack shows that Moscow is rightly conducting the so-called special military operation against Ukraine. There is currently no information about the participation of other countries. When asked whether the military leadership needed to be better protected, the spokesman replied: “A terrorist attack is a terrorist attack.”

Kirillov was also an important propagandist in Russia for the war of aggression against Ukraine that had been going on for almost three years.