KYIV — Ukrainian operatives on Tuesday killed a leading Russian military official in a daring bomb attack in Moscow.
Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, commander of the nuclear, biological and chemical forces of the Russian army, died in a blast as he was heading out of a residential block in Moscow, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.
An explosive device was hidden in an electric scooter parked nearby. Kirillov’s aide also died in the attack, the investigative committee said, announcing a criminal investigation.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed responsibility for Kirillov’s murder, a Ukrainian law enforcement official told POLITICO after being granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target since he gave orders to use banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military. Such an inglorious end awaits all who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable,” the official said.
A few hours before the attack, the SBU charged Kirillov in absentia for ordering the massive use of banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian army on the eastern and southern fronts of the battlefield.
“Since the beginning of the full-scale war, following Kirillov’s orders, the Russian army used different types of banned chemical munitions against Ukraine more than 4,800 times,” the SBU said in a statement Monday.
More than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been sent to hospitals with varying degrees of chemical poisoning since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
“Russians use ammunition with poisonous substances in the form of discharges from FPV drones,” the SBU added, claiming the Kremlin’s troops utilize chemical weapons to force Ukrainian soldiers to come out of their trenches and face direct fire.
The United Kingdom sanctioned Kirillov for the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine in October. Besides using banned munitions, Kirillov also regularly spread disinformation about the U.S. and Ukraine preparing to use contaminated battle mosquitos against adversaries.
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