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Bomb Kills General Who Led Russia’s Nuclear Defense Force
A Ukrainian official said Kyiv was responsible for the assassination of Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defense forces.
Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut
Anton Troianovski reported from Berlin, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.
A general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces was killed by a bomb on a Moscow street on Tuesday, the Russian authorities said, in one of the most brazen assassinations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
The general, Igor Kirillov, 54, died along with an aide after an explosive device planted in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, said in a statement.
An official with Ukraine’s security service, known as the S.B.U., said that Ukraine was responsible for the killing. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence operation, confirmed the details of the assassination given by Russia.
The S.B.U. considered General Kirillov a legitimate target, the official said.
A day before his killing, the S.B.U. had charged General Kirillov in absentia, saying he was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine. The security service said that Russian troops had dropped ammunition with toxic compounds onto Ukrainian positions in efforts to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches.
According to Russia’s military, the division that General Kirillov oversaw carries out specialized tasks like protecting Russian troops when chemical and nuclear weapons are used. He had headed a Russian military academy and was involved in the Russian military’s Covid-19 response.
The killing of General Kirillov was the highest-profile apparent assassination of a Russian military official far from the battlefield since the start of the invasion in 2022. While other Russian generals have died in occupied Ukraine or near the front line, he is the highest-ranking military official to have been killed inside Russia.
General Kirillov was also a player in Russia’s propaganda campaign against Ukraine and the West, frequently addressing the news media and appearing on television with unfounded claims. In 2023, for instance, he said that the United States was planning to use drones “designed to spread infected mosquitoes.”
General Kirillov also claimed that Russian forces had uncovered a chemical weapons production laboratory near Avdiivka, a Ukrainian city that Moscow’s troops captured in February.
On Tuesday, the RIA Novosti state news agency published a photograph of what it said was a bomb-disposal robot operating outside a brick building in Moscow. The agency reported that the explosion occurred at about 6:12 a.m. and was so powerful that it damaged windows as far up as the third floor and shattered them in a building across the street.
General Kirillov was the head of Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defense forces. He helped develop a thermobaric rocket launcher, the TOS-2, according to a biography published by RIA Novosti. The Russian military frequently reports its use in Ukraine.
There was no comment from the Kremlin in the hours after the killing on Tuesday, though Russian state television carried it as a top story in daytime news broadcasts, calling it a “tragedy.”
At Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the body’s chairman, Vyacheslav Volodin, held a moment of silence for the general and described him as “not only a military leader, but first and foremost a scientist.”
Dmitri Medvedev, a former president and deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, pledged “inevitable retaliation” against “military and political leadership of Ukraine.”
By assassinating General Kirillov, the Ukrainian government is trying to “drag out the war and killing” in Ukraine, Mr. Medvedev said in a statement issued by the security council, according to Tass.
The S.B.U. is Ukraine’s main domestic security agency, with responsibilities that include counterintelligence and tackling organized crime and terrorism. During the war, its duties have extended to conducting sabotage operations and killings inside Russia, in a campaign targeting prominent pro-Kremlin figures and military officials.
U.S. officials believe Ukraine’s security services were behind the 2022 killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. And the S.B.U. claimed responsibility for the assassination last month of Valery Trankovsky, a senior Russian naval officer, who Ukraine said had ordered missile strikes at civilian targets. Both were killed in car bombings.
Outnumbered on the battlefield, where it is steadily losing ground under relentless Russian assaults, Ukraine has regularly engaged in such unconventional warfare to complement its military effort.
The S.B.U. said that Russian forces had used chemical weapons on the battlefield more than 4,800 times since the war began, on General Kirillov’s orders. Russia denied the accusations during a July meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Ukraine has said the chemical weapons used by Russia often include combat grenades equipped with the irritant chemical agents CS and CN. These tear gases, most commonly used by riot police officers to control crowds, are banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an arms control treaty ratified by more than 150 countries, including Russia.
The U.S. State Department said this spring that Russia had used chloropicrin, a choking agent widely used in World War I, as well as tear gas on the battlefield. Britain also imposed sanctions on General Kirillov this fall for his responsibility in deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in May called the situation in Ukraine “volatile and extremely concerning regarding the possible re-emergence of use of toxic chemicals as weapons.” But it said that accusations of chemical weapons use in the war were “insufficiently substantiated.”
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Alina Lobzina from London and Nataliya Vasilyeva from Istanbul.
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. More about Anton Troianovski
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people. More about Constant Méheut
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