The Russian Security Service announced on Wednesday that it had arrested a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.
The suspect was described as an Uzbek national who had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov was killed on Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a motorcycle 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 a statement from the FSB, the suspect himself said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services. The AP cannot confirm the circumstances under which the suspect spoke to security services.
The Federal Security Service said that the suspect was promised a reward of $100,000 and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.
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The agency reported that on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he picked up a homemade explosive device. He placed the device on an electric motorcycle and parked it at the entrance to the apartment building where Kirillov lived.
The suspect then rented a car to monitor the site and set up a camera that broadcast the scene directly to those responsible for it in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. As soon as Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb. The Federal Security Service said that the suspect faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
The suspect was arrested in a village in the Moscow region, according to what the Russian news agency TASS reported, citing Interior Ministry official Irina Volk.
Kirillov, 54, was the commander of the army’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, over his actions in Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, the Ukrainian Security Service opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and accused Kiev of using toxic materials in the fighting.
Kirillov, who assumed his current position in 2017, was one of the most prominent figures to make these accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning attacks with radioactive materials — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
A State Security official said on Tuesday that the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as “a war criminal and a completely legitimate target.”
A State Security official presented a video clip they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before an explosion fills the frame.
Russia’s top government investigative agency said it was looking into Kirillov’s death as a terrorist case, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it was “obvious” that Ukraine was behind Kirillov’s killing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kiev “is not ashamed of terrorist methods.”
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Ilya Novikov contributed to this report from Kyiv, Ukraine.
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