Moscow arrests suspect in Igor Kirillov assassination

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A suspect has been arrested in the killing of top Russian general Igor Kirillov, who died alongside his aide when a bomb planted on his scooter exploded near his home in Moscow on Tuesday.

Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, said on Wednesday that it had arrested an Uzbek man who planted the bomb on the scooter, then. detonated it remotely.

It added that the suspect installed a camera in a rental car to film the explosion.

The FSB released the video of the suspect, who said he bought the scooter a few months ago.

In the video, the suspect said that Ukrainian intelligence offered him 100,000 dollars and a “European passport” to carry out the attack.

Kirillov, head of the military’s nuclear, chemical and biological defense forces, is the highest-ranking Russian official to be killed after President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion. Ukraine in 2022.

The bombing is the most brazen in a series of assassinations of high-ranking Russian officers carried out behind enemy lines.

The Kremlin said Putin expressed his “deep condolences”, adding that Russian secret services were “effectively” investigating the killing.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday that the assassination “once again” showed that Russia’s actions against Ukraine were “right,” RIA Novosti reports.

Hard-line officials have called Russia respond to Kirillov’s death by targeting high-ranking Ukrainian officials.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former Putin supporter who is now his deputy in Russia’s Security Council, called on security officials to “destroy the people standing in Kiev.”

Kirillov was sanctioned by the UK in October for “deploying barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, including the toxic asphyxiant chloropicrin.

The SBU, one of Ukraine’s security services, issued a “notice of suspicion” to Kirillov essentially a day before the attack for alleged “war crimes” involving the use of chemical weapons against Kiev forces.

Kirillov was also known for public briefings in which he accused Ukraine of plotting to use chemical weapons and of launching US drones carrying “infected mosquitoes” to spread malaria among Russian forces.