Protecting our precious bodily tissues. The favourite conspiracy theories of General Kirillov, assassinated in Moscow

On the morning of December 17, TASS reported an explosion on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow, with two people dead. The agency later confirmed that Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence Troops (NBC), and his aide, Major Ilya Polikarpov, had been killed in the blast. Both died instantly. Ukrainian media published footage from a dashcam of a nearby parked car.

The improvised bomb was packed with shrapnel. It was placed near the entrance of a building—likely on the handle of a scooter parked by the door—and detonated remotely. Kirillov owned an apartment on Ryazansky Prospekt in Moscow, Agentstvo noted.

Kirillov became the most senior Russian military figure killed on Russian soil since Captain First Rank Valery Trankovsky died in a car bombing in Sevastopol. One day before the attack, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) named Kirillov as responsible for the Russian military’s mass use of banned chemical weapons—including grenades loaded with poison to force Ukrainian soldiers out of trenches.

Following Kirillov’s death, Russian officials were quick to comment on it, praising the general’s record. Vladimir Chizhov, deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s committee on defence and security, said that Kirillov “skilfully exposed provocations by western intelligence agencies and their Ukrainian henchmen, which made him a target.” Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev called the general a true patriot, and the attack against him “the death throes of the Banderite regime.” State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that Kirillov “did much to ensure Russia’s security and sovereignty”, and called him “an intellectual”. The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, added that the general had “for many years, systematically, with evidence in hand, exposed the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons.”

Exposing the crimes of the West was indeed a favourite topic of Kirillov’s briefings, which he regularly gave at the Defence Ministry. The Ministry’s website has transcripts of 180 such briefings, all full of recurring narratives and often accompanied by documents supposedly confirming the authenticity of the theories presented.

Viruses: “Ukraine is, in essence, a testing ground for the development of biological weapon components and the testing of new pharmaceuticals”

One of Kirillov’s main revelations was that the US and its NATO allies were using Ukrainian territory as a base for developing biological weapons and testing pharmaceuticals.

Besides the US, Kirillov highlighted the particular involvement of German and Polish institutions in this work. The US was supposedly interested in “cholera, tularemia, plague, hantaviruses”, while Poland was interested in rabies viruses. These experiments were conducted on humans,, he said, including patients at a psychiatric hospital in Kharkiv. In November last year, Kirillov claimed that the US had placed 46 biological laboratories in Ukraine.

Birds: “Facts of the collection and identification of strains of bird flu virus have been established”

According to Kirillov, experiments were being conducted in Ukraine to infect the population with strains of bird flu, “the lethality of which, when transmitted to humans, can reach 40%”.

He said that relevant documents had been obtained at the Askania-Nova biosphere reserve in the Kherson region during Russian occupation—its staff were supposedly studying bird migration routes for the purpose of spreading the virus.

Insects: “The interest of American military biologists in studying insect vectors in the locations of animal burial grounds is also not accidental”

Another of Kirillov’s revelations was that Americans were studying the burial sites of dead animals, taking soil samples from animal burial grounds.

They were also supposedly interested in disease-carrying insects, particularly those that could carry anthrax. Kirillov returned to the topic of insects in the summer of 2023, saying that American experts were “in controlled envirotments” to acquire “mosquitoes and ticks infected with arboviruses”.

Russian tissues: “The collection and export of biological materials of Russian citizens abroad for undeclared purposes poses a threat to the security of the Russian Federation”

In 2018, Kirillov gave a speech dedicated to analysing US military-biological activity in Georgia. According to him, the US had been developing biological weapons at the Richard M. Lugar Center for Public Health in the outskirts of Tbilisi, Georgia, since 2011.

As a result of the experiments, he said, 73 people died. Even then, Kirillov suggested that the laboratories were being built in countries bordering Russia not by chance—this was likely linked to The Genographic Project, a collaboration between the National Geographic Society and IBM that collected human DNA samples to map historical human migration patterns. General claimed that their interests lay in tissues from “mono-ethnic groups” in the North Caucasus, the Far East, and the Ural region—collecting “synovial tissues of Russians” since at least 2016.

Drugs in the Ukrainian Armed Forces: “High concentrations of antibiotics were found in their blood, as well as immunological markers indicating contact with pathogens of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and West Nile fever”

According to Kirillov, Western countries were funding biological laboratories not only to destroy Russian soldiers, but also to improve the combat performance of Ukrainian soldiers. Evidence of contact with fever pathogens, opioid, and stimulant narcotics of the ephedrine series was allegedly found in the blood of captured Ukrainians.

Kirillov recalled that Nazi Germany also used Pervitin, an early form of methamphetamine. Similarly, Ukrainians were cultivating “excessive aggressiveness in themselves, which explains the extreme cruelty shown by some Ukrainian soldiers towards civilians”.

Dirty bomb: “Well, we won’t reveal secrets. In fact, it’s not that difficult”

Kirillov was one of the primary speakers on the subject of a “dirty bomb” allegedly being prepared in Ukraine as means of provocation. RIA Novosti and other Russian state media began disseminating information about a “dirty bomb” in October 2022.

“As a result of carrying out a provocation with the use of a ‘dirty bomb’, Ukraine hopes to intimidate the local population, increase the flow of refugees across Europe and portray the Russian Federation as a nuclear terrorist,” Kirillov said at the time.

Later, any mention of a “dirty bomb” disappeared from official rhetoric, but in the summer of 2024, Kirillov suddenly returned to it. “A ‘dirty bomb’… well, we won’t reveal secrets. In fact, it’s not that difficult. I think they have one,” he told Zvezda, Defence Ministry’s TV network. A few weeks later, he added that Ukraine could use spent nuclear fuel to create it.

Editor: Dmitry Treschanin