Key Russian general killed in Moscow bomb blast claimed by Ukraine

By Maria Kostenko, Victoria Butenko and Nectar Gan, CNN

(CNN) — A top Russian general accused of using chemical weapons on the battlefields in Ukraine was killed after a bomb went off in Moscow early Tuesday, Russian investigators said, in an attack swiftly claimed by Kyiv.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who headed Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted in an electric scooter outside an apartment building some 7 kilometers (4 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.

The blast came a day after Ukrainian prosecutors sentenced Kirillov in absentia for Russia’s use of banned chemical weapons during its invasion. A source with knowledge of the operation later told CNN that Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, was behind the attack.

“Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, as he gave orders to use banned chemical substances against the Ukrainian military,” the source told CNN. “Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”

Kirillov is the most senior military official known to be killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His assistant was also killed in the blast on Ryazansky Street. A CNN team on the ground saw blast marks at the entrance to a residential building, cordoned off by investigators.

The bomb packed explosive power amounting to to some 300 grams of TNT, Russian state news agency TASS reported. Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the attack, calling it a “terrorist act.”

Ukraine’s SBU on Monday said that more than 4,800 cases of Russian use of chemical munitions had been recorded on Kirillov’s orders since the war began – particularly grenades equipped with irritant chemical agents.

CNN has previously reported on Russia’s use of tear gas as a weapon in Ukraine.

Before his death, the United States had sanctioned Kirillov’s government entity for its alleged use of the chemical weapon chloropicrin against troops in Ukraine. Chloropicrin – which affects the eyes, skin, throat and lungs – was manufactured for use as a tear gas during the trench warfare of World War I. It was banned in 1993 under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which Russia is a signatory.

The US State Department said in May that Russia used such weapons “to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield.”

The United Kingdom also sanctioned Kirillov in October for the “deployment of barbaric chemical weapons” in Ukraine.

Over nearly three years of war, Kirillov had routinely made unfounded claims about Ukraine’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The UK accused Kirillov of acting as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation.”

In October 2022 – when Ukraine began to liberate territories in Kherson and elsewhere, delivering a major setback to Russia’s invasion – Kirillov made unfounded accusations that Ukraine was planning to detonate a “dirty bomb,” dispersing radioactive matter on its own territory. “This work is in its final stage,” he said.

In November this year, he claimed that one of the key aims of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant.

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