A senior Russian general was killed in Moscow on Monday when a bomb planted under his car exploded, investigators said, making it the third general killed by a car bomb in the past year.
The attack comes almost exactly 12 months after another top Russian general was killed by an explosive device in Moscow in an attack claimed by Ukraine’s domestic security agency, the SBU. In April, another Russian general was killed in a car bomb near Moscow.
Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, who headed the army’s Directorate for Operational Training, died as a result of his injuries, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Images shared by the investigators showed a white car in a Moscow parking lot that had sustained heavy damage, with large sections of the vehicle’s body missing, the driver’s seat stained in blood and debris strewn on the ground. Photographs by the Associated Press showed heavily armed law enforcement personnel at the scene behind police tape.
The Investigative Committee said Sarvarov had taken part in the war in Ukraine, without offering further details. According to the government-owned Tass news agency, Sarvarov’s military career included stints in Syria in 2015-2016 and fighting insurgents in Chechnya in the 1990s. The agency reported that the 56-year-old was promoted to his most recent role in 2016.
On Monday, prosecutors opened a criminal investigation and said they were examining the scene for forensic evidence.
“The investigation is considering various versions of the murder. One of them involves the possible organization of the crime by Ukrainian special services,” said Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee.
A spokesperson for the SBU wasn’t immediately available for comment Monday morning. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, did not respond to a request for comment.
Sarvarov’s death comes a year after a similar explosion in the Russian capital targeted Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, a high-ranking military official who was killed when an explosive device attached to a scooter detonated as he exited a residential building. The SBU was responsible for the attack, according to an agency official who spoke at the time on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
In April, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik died when a car he was walking past in a Moscow suburb exploded. Russian investigators said later he had been under surveillance before the attacks, and they accused Ukrainian secret services of involvement.
Negotiations over a U.S.-sponsored peace proposal continued over the weekend, with U.S., Ukrainian and European officials meeting in Florida. Washington’s special envoy to the talks, Steve Witkoff, and the head of Kyiv’s delegation, Rustem Umerov, issued statements calling the negotiations “productive and constructive.”
“Particular attention was given to discussing timelines and the sequencing of next steps,” the statement said.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a key figure in the talks, was also in Miami and met separately with Witkoff, who said later that “Russia remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine.”
However, Yuri Ushakov, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said most of the proposals were “rather unconstructive” and would most likely be rejected, Tass reported on Sunday.
It’s unclear whether the death of a high-ranking officer will affect the talks but Russian military bloggers, some of whom have criticized any prospect of a ceasefire with Ukraine until Russia achieves its maximalist goals in the war, pointed fingers at Ukrainian special services and called the incident a harbinger of prolonged hostility.
“It’s hard to talk about peace when your opponent is preparing for an even bigger war. I think we need to call things by their proper names and stop lulling the public,” state television reporter and blogger Andrei Rudenko wrote in his Telegram blog.
Other bloggers have called on Russian law enforcement to ensure better protections for military servicemen.
“It’s hard to win when the rear is an open thoroughfare,” wrote another military blogger Yuri Kotenok. “Unfortunately, war teaches nothing.”
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued their offensive along the front line in eastern Ukraine. On Sunday, Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on social media that Russian troops “forcibly detained and deported about 50 Ukrainian citizens” from Hrabovske, a village near the Russian border in the northeastern region of Sumy.
Lubinets said he had written to Russia’s commissioner for human rights to demand their release but did not provide further details. Russian officials did not respond to the charges.
“With such medieval raids, Putin’s Russia shows it is no different from terrorist groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, or Hamas,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X on Sunday.
Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.
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