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RUSSIA'S security service said today that it has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.
The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was killed on Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his block of flats in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service levelled criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) didn’t name the suspect, but said he was born in 1995. According to a statement by the FSB, the suspect said himself that he was recruited by Ukrainian special services.
The FSB said the suspect had been promised a reward of $100,000 (£78,788) and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Mr Kirillov.
The agency stated that acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect travelled to Moscow, where he picked up a home-made explosive device. He placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance to the residential building where Mr Kirillov lived.
The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed the scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
Once Mr Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb. The suspect faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment, the FSB said.
The suspect was detained in a village in the Moscow region, according to Ministry of Internal Affairs official Irina Volk, who was quoted by Russian state news agency Tass.
Mr Kirillov, 54, was the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including Britain and Canada, for his actions in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused Kiev of using toxic agents in combat.
