Putin Humbled as His Nuke Chief is Assassinated Right Under His Nose in Moscow

A Russian general accused of using banned chemical weapons in Ukraine was assassinated early Tuesday in Moscow by a remote-controlled bomb planted in an electric scooter, Reuters reported.

Lt. General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces, died along with his assistant when the bomb was set off outside an apartment building in the Ryazansky Prospekt neighborhood, Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles serious crimes, said in a statement.

Photographs from the crime scene show two bodies lying in the blood-stained snow in front of the apartment building’s shattered entrance. The killing is being investigated as a homicide but was likely to be upgraded to terrorism, police sources told Russian media.

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Ukrainian security sources told multiple media outlets that the assassination was a special operation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

“Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, since he gave orders to use prohibited chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military,” an SBU source told CBS News. “Such an inglorious end awaits everyone who kills Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”

A day before his death, the SBU had charged Kirillov in absentia for allegedly using illegal chemical weapons during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, particularly K-1 combat grenades, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The SBU said their investigation revealed the weapons had been used more than 4,800 times on the battlefield since February 2022. More than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been hospitalized with chemical poisoning and three have died.

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Russia has denied using chemical weapons, and Kirillov has accused Ukraine of violating nuclear safety protocols, the AP reported.

But the U.S. Department of State confirmed in May that the chemical weapon chloropicrin, a toxic choking agent first introduced during World War I, was used against Ukrainian troops. The U.K. and Canada have both sanctioned Kirillov for using chemical weapons against Ukraine, according to the AP.

Other high-profile targets have been assassinated on Russian soil since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Just last week, Ukrainian intelligence forces gunned down one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top missile developers in a park.

Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, was also killed in a car bomb in 2022. Last year, a pro-war blogger was murdered in a café bombing and a submarine commander accused of war crimes was shot and killed while jogging.

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