Russia detains suspect for murder of its general in Moscow

Russia has detained a citizen of Uzbekistan who confessed to planting and detonating the bomb that killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov in Moscow on Tuesday. He was following instructions from the Ukrainian security service, which has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kirillov, 54, was head of Russia’s Radiological, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops. He was accused of using chemical weapons in the war against Ukraine. He died at the door of his apartment building along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter exploded. He is the highest-ranking Russian military officer killed inside Russia by Ukraine.

“We have more evidence that the kyiv regime stops at nothing, including terrorism,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. President Vladimir Putin privately expressed his condolences to the general’s family.

Kirillov’s elimination It has a rather symbolic scope given the voluminous Russian military leadership: It is infantry that Putin lacks, not generals. But at the same time the regime always strives to find a balance between a level of competition and blind obedience, and Kirillov was one of those necessary profiles. With the assassination of the general, kyiv aims to transmit insecurity to the leadership of the regime, which is waging a comfortable war from a distance that practically only entails destruction and risks on the other side of the border.

Since the great invasion began, the Russian intelligence services have focused on controlling the population in general and dissidents in particular. Surveillance of so many ordinary citizens and also possible infiltrators from Ukraine, Russian agents have been surprised by terrorist actions such as the Islamist attack last March, considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in more than a decade. That now Ukraine, the main Russian obsession, has reached the heart of Moscow to kill a high command made even more ridiculous to the Russian intelligence services.

In the ranks of Russian ultranationalism, which cheers the destruction of Ukraine every day, a mixture of embarrassment and paranoia is once again spreading. Yuri Kotenok, a prominent Russian propagandist, reacted to the attack by denouncing the existence of a bulging “fifth column” within Russia “which in reality is an enormous layer of tens, or hundreds of thousands, participating in active or latent missions for the enemy.” “.

Kotenok and other exponents of the hard wing of Putinism believe that “martial law should be introduced not only in the border areas, not only where the projectiles fly.”

Kill for money and a passport

Russia’s Investigative Committee reported in a statement on Wednesday that the suspect has confessed to them that he had come to Moscow to carry out a mission for Ukraine’s intelligence services, which They offered him $100,000 for his role in the murder and residence in a European country.

The detainee arrived in Moscow on behalf of the Ukrainian intelligence services, bought an electric scooter and then received a homemade explosive device to carry out the attack months later. He placed the device on the electric scooter he had parked in front of the entrance to the apartment block where Kirillov lived.

The suspect also installed a surveillance camera in a nearby rental car, so the organizers of the murder, who according to their testimony were in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, used the camera to watch the victim leave his apartment.

The Shot and Baza channels reported that the suspect’s name is Ajmad Kurbanov. He was detained in the village of Chernoye, near Moscow.

The Ukrainian intelligence service SBU had accused Kirillov of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, something Moscow denies. After learning of his death, the SBU assumed responsibility for the attack. Russia will take the case of the assassination of its general at the hands of Ukraine to the UN on Friday, declared the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Former president Dmitri Medvedev angrily attacked an editorial in the London newspaper The Times that described the assassination as “a legitimate act of defense of a threatened nation.” The current number two on the Russian Security Council warned the “damn jackals” at the ‘Times’ that the same logic would imply that Western officials providing military aid to Ukraine would be legitimate targets for Russia and themselves: “Be careful Because a lot of things happen in London.

Investigators continue to identify other people involved in the attack. The organizers of the attack recruited the executors through instant messaging chats, providing them with the contacts of an SBU liaison officer. The diary Kommersant reported that another suspect had been detained. Both were followed by law enforcement directly from the crime scene, where surveillance cameras recorded two suspicious vehicles.