A SENIOR Russian general was killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his bloc of flats in Moscow today, a day after Ukraine’s security service levelled criminal charges against him.

A Ukrainian official said today that the country’s secret services carried out the hit on Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Russia’s military chief of nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces. His assistant also died in the attack.

Mr Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including Britain and Canada, for his actions in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information, described Mr Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”

The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

In May, the US State Department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.

Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kiev of using toxic agents in combat.

Mr Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the highest profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.

The bomb used in today’s attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork.

Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s investigating Mr Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, described the attack as an attempt by Kiev to distract public attention away from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution.”