MOSCOW — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed early Tuesday by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment block in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
Kirillov’s assistant also died in the blast, which was triggered by an explosive device placed in a scooter, officials said.
Russian investigators have opened a case into the two deaths, the committee’s spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said.
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” she said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military that started in Feb. 2022.
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said that they had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During , Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
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