MOSCOW — A man has been arrested in connection with the assassination of the head of Russia's chemical, radiological and biological weapons unit, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, authorities in the country said Wednesday.
“During the interrogation, he explained that he was recruited by the Ukrainian special services,” Svetlana Petrenko, a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said in a statement.
“On their instructions, he arrived in Moscow and received a homemade explosive device. He placed it on an electric scooter, which he parked at the entrance to the residential building where Igor Kirillov lived,” she added.
Tuesday's assassination was the latest in a long line of acts of sabotage and covert killings to hit Russia as its war in Ukraine grinds on.
At the site of the explosion Wednesday, bent metal and bricks had been blown from the walls, and blood remained in the snow. As people and cars passed by on the busy street where Kirillov lived, some left red roses.
The suspect rented a car and “installed a video surveillance camera” so he could broadcast the video online, Petrenko said, adding that the man was from Uzbekistan and in his 20s.
State media, citing video from the FSB — Russia’s domestic intelligence agency — identified the suspect, whom authorities did not name, as Akhmad Kurbanov.
Petrenko said he was guaranteed $100,000 and European residence as payment for the attack, which also killed Kirillov's assistant, Ilya Polikarpov.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had already claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday, although national security adviser Jake Sullivan told MSNBC that the United States was not aware of the operation ahead of time and was not involved.
"We do support and enable Ukraine to defend itself and to take the fight to Russian forces on the battlefield. But not operations like this," Sullivan said.
Video Russia's Investigative Committee published Tuesday on Telegram showed emergency responders parked outside an apartment building where one entrance was visibly damaged.
Kirillov was killed the day after Ukrainian security services charged him with using banned chemical weapons during Russia's invasion of the country, which began in February 2022. Russian authorities have denied the allegations.
It was the latest in a string of such attacks and the most recent move in the shadow war underlying the front-line conflict Russia and Ukraine have been fighting for almost three years.
Last month, the SBU claimed it had assassinated Valery Trankovsky, a Russian naval captain in charge of brigade missile ships in the Black Sea, after his car was blown up.
Citing Ukrainian media, The Associated Press also reported that a car bomb killed Sergei Yevsyukov — the former head of a prison housing Ukrainian prisoners of war — in Russian-occupied Donetsk this month.
Russia was accused of sending two incendiary devices to DHL logistics hubs in Germany and the United Kingdom in July as part of a wider sabotage campaign to possibly start fires aboard aircraft bound for North America.
While the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its first land grab came in 2014. It was then when Washington and Kyiv began developing intelligence cooperation, with the U.S. espionage community training the Ukrainian military intelligence agency known as the GUR, which has been at the forefront of the country's sabotage offensive, former U.S. officials told NBC News last year.
Amid the grinding attrition the huge Russian army has used to eke out territorial gains in eastern Ukraine, sabotage and assassinations have been two of the unconventional methods Ukraine has deployed to score morale-boosting wins and avoid burning through its limited troops and materiel.
Britain also sanctioned Kirillov in October, punishing him and Russia's nuclear protection forces for using riot control agents and reports that they uses chloropicrin, a chemical choking agent, on the battlefield.
In a statement at the time, the British government said Kirillov was “responsible for helping deploy these barbaric weapons” and had been “a significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation, spreading lies to mask Russia’s shameful and dangerous behavior.”
But shortly after his death, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova defended Kirillov, who also held several posts in the Directorate of the Chief of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense since 2009 before he led the force, according to the state news agency RIA.
“He worked fearlessly,” Zakharova said in a statement published on Telegram. “He met problems head on. For the Motherland, for the truth. Bright be his memory, may he rest in peace.”
She added that he had been “systematically exposing the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons for many years.”
The killings have come during a period when Russian forces have gained momentum in the war with Ukraine, pushing forward in the east of the country.
However, Ukrainian special forces said Tuesday they had killed 50 North Korean troops in Russia's Kursk region, the first such casualties since the secretive communist state sent soldiers to eastern Europe.
The U.S. Defense Department press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, said Monday that North Korean military personnel have been killed and wounded in combat operations in the area but did not specify how many.
Keir Simmons reported from Moscow and David Hodari from London.
