Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast

An explosive device near a residential apartment block in Moscow killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, early Tuesday, Russia’s Investigative Committee reported.

Kirillov’s assistant also died in the explosion, which officials said was caused by a device planted in a scooter.

The bomb was remotely detonated, according to unnamed emergency service sources cited by state-run news agency TASS.

Russian investigators have launched a case into the incident, confirmed Svetlana Petrenko, a spokesperson for the Investigative Committee.

According to law enforcement sources cited by TASS, the explosive device had a power equivalent to approximately 300 grams of TNT. As noted by the independent publication Important Stories, this is comparable to the devices used in the Moscow metro attacks in 2010 (which killed 41 people and injured over 80) and the St. Petersburg metro attack in 2017 (which killed 16 and injured more than 100).

According to leaks analyzed by the independent investigative outlet Agentstvo, Kirillov owns a share in an 84.2-square-meter apartment in a building on Moscow’s Ryazansky Prospekt. He had declared the use of an apartment of this size in 2019.

Igor Kirillov is the first lieutenant general to be killed behind the lines since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was known for spreading disinformation, frequently claiming that the United States was developing biological weapons in laboratories located in Ukraine (1, 2).

On Dec. 16, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) formally accused him of the use of chemical weapons by Russian forces against Ukrainian troops on the eastern and southern fronts of Ukraine.

In October, the UK government imposed sanctions on Kirillov and his unit “for helping deploy these barbaric weapons” — accusations that Moscow has denied. Britain and the US have accused Russia of violating the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by using the toxic agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces.

This is the second high-profile attack in a week on individuals in Russia connected to the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier, Ukrainian media reported that Mikhail Shatsky, a Russian expert involved in modernizing missiles launched against Ukraine, was shot dead in Moscow.

Shatsky served as deputy chief designer and head of the software department at Moscow's Experimental Design Bureau Mars, where he was reportedly involved in the modernization of Kh-59 and Kh-69 cruise missiles.

Prior to Igor Kirillov's death, the highest-ranking Russian military officer killed behind the lines was Captain 1st Rank Valery Trankovsky, commander of the 41st Missile Boat Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet. He died in a car explosion in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea.