“Another one has fallen. This morning (December 17, 2024) Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov – commander of the radiation, chemical and biological protection (RCB) troops, was leaving his apartment block on Ryazansky Prospekt, accompanied by his assistant, when a bomb planted on an electric scooter exploded“. Both men were killed in another Ukrainian physical liquidation operation targeting Russian officers accused of war crimes, this is how Mark Galeotti – head of the consulting firm “Mayak Intelligence“ summarized the events of early Tuesday morning in the British edition “Spectator“ and an emeritus professor at the Faculty of Slavic and East European Studies at the University College London (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies\ SSEES), author of nearly 30 books on Russia, writes BTA.
The timing of the operation is hardly coincidental, emphasizes Galeotti. The 54-year-old Kirillov has been subject to British sanctions since 2017, when he was targeted for his activities with the Russian Chemical Weapons Corps (including support for the use of chemical weapons in Syria) and for his role as a propagandist spreading lies such as the claim that Ukraine has secrets about biological warfare laboratories.
The day before, however, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) accused him in absentia of being responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons“, Galeotti reflects in “Spectator“. Kiev claims that since the beginning of the war, more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been treated in hospital for exposure to asphyxiating agents - first tear gas, and then the more serious chloropicrin, widely used since World War I.
Then, as now, chloropicrin worked to clear enemy trenches because it causes severe irritation to the lungs, eyes, and skin, and worse, Galeotti emphasizes. There are indications, the Spectator reports, that at least three Ukrainian soldiers have died as a direct result of a chloropicrin attack.
Kirilov is the most senior officer to be killed in a targeted operation away from the front line, the British publication writes, but he is hardly the first high-ranking military officer to be targeted, because the Ukrainians are stepping up this campaign.
Earlier this month, a car bomb killed Sergei Yevsyukov - the former head of the infamous Olenivka prison, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022. Kiev believes that Moscow carried out the attack to destroy evidence of torture and other war crimes, although this has not been confirmed, Galeotti points out.
In November, the Spectator analysis recalls, Valery Trankovsky - Chief of Staff of the 41st Missile Ship and Boat Brigade of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was killed in Sevastopol, again by a bomb planted under a car. Trankovsky was charged with war crimes for the role of the units he commanded in the bombing of Ukrainian cities.
In October of this year, a bomb killed Andriy Korotky - head of security at the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whom the SSU had declared a “collaborator“.
On the other hand, the murder in October of Nikita Klenkov - a high-ranking officer of the Special Operations Forces who was at the front in Ukraine, does not seem to be related to the war. It is more likely the result of gang feuds, believes Galeotti.
The pace of operations behind the front lines, which are transferring from the physical to the virtual world, is not slowing down either, the British publication notes. Earlier this year, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media and internet regulator, noted a growing number of attacks on Russian computer networks, mainly originating in Ukraine, aimed at accessing classified data (which can help identify agents and operations) and damaging national infrastructure.
It is estimated that “about 70% of the incidents investigated were linked to the activities of pro-Ukrainian groups.” Part of this is retaliation for Russia’s campaign of drones, missiles and hacking of critical infrastructure. But these actions also have a political dimension, Galeotti reports. The murders of war mongers such as blogger Vladlen Tatarsky (bombed in April 2023) and the daughter of a nationalist philosopher Darya Dugina (with a bomb planted under her car in August 2022) in an attack likely aimed at her father did not silence the "turbo patriots", but did provide them with martyrs, writes the "Spectator".
The analysis notes that by targeting commanders, especially those accused of war crimes, and individuals supporting the Kremlin's rule in the occupied territories, Kiev wants to demoralize those on whom the war directly depends.
Even within the Russian officer corps, there is ultimately a suppressed but widespread sense of horror, mainly at what the war is doing to the Russian army, notes the Spectator.
When a Russian communist MP in September took the liberty of publicly asking how the army had come to be reduced to a "gang of bandits," it attracted considerable attention on social media channels that officers follow, the British analysis points out.
By demonstrating that there is no impunity, even for the generals who remain in Moscow, the hope is to encourage more officers, if not to oppose the war, at least to try not to get involved in it.
In itself, this will not stop this bloody war, reports Mark Galeotti. It is an attempt to build a critical mass of causes and people who simply want this to stop, summarizes the “Spectator“ analyst.
He summarized that the attack on Russian oil facilities, government websites that display anti-war propaganda, diplomatic efforts to isolate Russia and close the “loopholes“ through which it evades sanctions, physical killings, are simply additional fronts in the war that is being waged in all areas of society.
Incidentally, during his annual press conference on December 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin said regarding the murder of General Kirillov that Ukraine has repeatedly committed terrorist acts against Russian citizens, Reuters reported.
On the day of the murder, prominent Russian senator Vladimir Chizhov said, quoted by TASS, that the terrorist act was a gesture of desperation by the Kiev regime. Chizhov also pointed out that after this murder, control over scooters in Moscow should be strengthened.
And the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev announced on “Telegram“ that NATO employees are “legitimate military targets“, after an editorial in the London newspaper. The Times“ stated that the murder of Gen. Kirillov was “a legitimate act of defense committed by a threatened state“.
In the “Times“ article writes that the murder was a “understandable act against an aggressor“, which emphasizes the need for Western governments to give Ukraine “all the support it needs to fight a just war of self-defense“.
Medvedev wrote, quoted by the Russian edition of the “Moscow Times“, that the “Times“ journalists are “cucumber jackals who cowardly hid behind an editorial“ and are accomplices of those who commit crimes against Russia.
“Is it logical? Absolutely! In this regard, be careful! Because a lot is happening in London,” warned Medvedev, who was Russian president from 2008 to 2012.
The ominous threat appears to be a veiled reference to the 2006 murder of former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko by radiation poisoning with the rare and highly toxic radioactive isotope polonium-210.
A decade later, the ECHR found Russia guilty of Litvinenko’s murder.
In an analysis on the subject, the BBC points out that the SSU claims that Russia used chemical weapons more than 4,800 times under the leadership of Gen. Kirillov. According to the SSU, Russian forces are using drones to drop chemical weapons on Ukrainian positions, the BBC writes on its website.
An investigation conducted in August by the publication “Kiev Independent“ has shown that Moscow's forces are increasingly using gas attacks against Ukrainian soldiers. Interviewed Ukrainian soldiers and officers have admitted that this Russian tactic is effective because it allows Moscow to seize positions, sometimes without destroying them.
The British newspaper “Daily Telegraph“ (DT) notes that Kirillov was involved in the attempted assassination in March 2018 with the nerve agent “Novichok” of former double agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury. According to DT, the troops commanded by the general probably provided the means to carry out the assassination. In addition, the Russian secret agents involved in the assassination attempt must have been trained by the CBRN forces, writes DT.
The publication notes that Kirillov has recently been accused by Ukrainian forces of producing “dirty radiological bombs“.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and former commanding officer of the United Kingdom's Combined Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, wrote in DT that Gen. Kirillov was a truly evil man who contributed to the commission of crimes against humanity around the world. His death is a huge blow to Putin, commented De Bretton-Gordon, who is already in a weaker position after the Syrian failure.
It is now clear that the dictator cannot protect even his most trusted supporters - those who willingly do his dirty work, even in Moscow, concludes the analysis of the “Daily Telegraph“.