Russia Says Suspect Arrested in General’s Murder in Moscow – National

Russia’s security service said Wednesday it has arrested a suspect in the area assassination of a superior general in Moscow

The suspect was described as an Uzbek national recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.

the lieutenant general Igor Kirillov was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden on a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service brought criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, did not name the suspect but said he was born in 1995. According to an FSB statement, the suspect himself said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services . AP cannot confirm the conditions under which the suspect spoke with security services.

The FSB said the suspect had been promised a $100,000 reward and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.

The agency said that, following instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he picked up a homemade explosive device. He placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance of the residential building where Kirillov lived.

The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that streamed the scene live to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. When Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb. The suspect faces up to life in prison, the FSB said.

The suspect was arrested in a village in the Moscow region, according to the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Irina Volk, quoted by the Russian state news agency TASS.

Kirillov, 54, was the head of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including Britain and Canada, for his actions in the large-scale invasion of ‘Ukraine by Russia. On Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

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Russia has denied using chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused Kiev of using toxic agents in combat.

Kirillov, who took up his current job in 2017, was one of the most prominent figures to raise these allegations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances, claims that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as propaganda.

An SBU official said on Tuesday that the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and a completely legitimate target.”

The SBU officer provided a video he said was of the bombing. It shows two men exiting a building shortly before an explosion fills the frame.

Russia’s main state investigative agency said it is investigating Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and Moscow officials vowed to punish Ukraine.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it was “obvious” that Ukraine was behind Kirillov’s murder. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kiev “does not shy away from terrorist methods.”

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Illia Novikov contributed to this report from Kyiv, Ukraine.

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