Russian Chemical Defence Chief Igor Kirillov Killed by Scooter Bomb in Moscow
On the morning of December 17, 2024, an explosion outside the entrance of a residential building on Ryazansky Prospekt in southeastern Moscow, Russia, killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Russian Armed Forces' Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops, and his assistant. Russia's Investigative Committee confirmed the two deaths that day and announced that a criminal case had been opened.
According to the Investigative Committee's statement, an explosive device planted in an electric scooter parked next to the entrance of the residential building was detonated that morning, killing Kirillov and his assistant. The committee said its Main Investigative Department for the city of Moscow had opened a criminal case over the killing of the two servicemen, and that investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene to establish all the circumstances of the incident.
A source in Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) told Reuters and AFP that day that the killing was an SBU "special operation," calling Kirillov a "war criminal" and an "absolutely legitimate target." That account came from a Ukrainian source and had not been independently verified as of that day; Ukraine did not publicly claim the operation in a formal statement.
Just one day earlier, on December 16, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that, under the procedural supervision of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office, it had served Kirillov with a notice of suspicion in absentia on a war-crime charge. Ukraine alleged that, on Kirillov's orders since the start of the full-scale war, Russian forces had used banned chemical munitions more than 4,800 times on the eastern and southern fronts of Ukraine, including K-1 combat grenades containing the irritant chemical agents CS and CN, and that more than 2,000 Ukrainian service members had been sent to hospitals with varying degrees of chemical poisoning. Ukraine said the munitions and soil samples had been handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons under a chain-of-custody procedure. Russia had previously called such accusations "baseless."
Kirillov, 54, had headed Russia's Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops since 2017. In October 2024, the British government sanctioned Kirillov and his unit over their alleged role in helping deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine. As of December 17, 2024, the Russian investigation was continuing, and those who organized and carried out the explosion had yet to be established by investigators. (Source: Investigative Committee of Russia, Security Service of Ukraine)
Source: 俄罗斯联邦侦查委员会、乌克兰国家安全局
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于莫斯科的俄罗斯联邦侦查委员会总部大楼，门口可见委员会名牌。Cannot 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons（1280px 版）。 / Photo: Headquarters of the Investigative Committee of Russia in Moscow, with the committee's nameplate at the entrance. By Cannot, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (1280px version).
