Russia detains suspect over General Igor Kirillov
After Ukraine’s secret service claimed responsibility for the lethal attack in Moscow, Russian authorities have detained an Uzbek man.
Russian authorities said Wednesday that they had detained an Uzbek citizen after a senior general was killed by a bomb hidden in an electric scooter.
“A national of Uzbekistan, born in 1995, was arrested on suspicion of having committed the attack that cost the life of the commander of Russian radiological, chemical and biological defence forces, Igor Kirillov, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
It claimed that the 29-year-old suspect had admitted being “recruited by Ukrainian special forces” while Russia’s state TASS news agency said the man had been offered $100,000 and travel to the European Union.
The Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) press department said the man was “suspected of committing a terrorist act.”
Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, 54, and his adjutant were killed outside a residential block in a southeastern Moscow suburb on Tuesday morning when a device either hidden in or attached to a scooter was detonated remotely.
The pair appear to have been killed instantly.
Ukraine claims responsibility for killing of Russian general
Sources close to Ukraine’s SBU domestic intelligence agency have unofficially claimed responsibility for the assassination.
“The liquidation of the chief of the radiation and chemical protection troops of the Russian Federation is the work of the SBU,” a SBU source told several news agencies.
The attack came just 24 hours after Ukrainian state prosecutors had officially charged Kirillov in absentia with ordering the use of banned chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine, allegedly hospitalizing around 2,000 soldiers and killing three.
Moscow denies this, claiming it destroyed what remained of its chemical weapons stockpile back in 2017.
The United States and the United Kingdom had previously accused Russia of deploying the toxic agent chloropicrin, with the latter placing sanctions on Kirillov in October.
