Chief of Russian nuclear protection forces killed in Moscow bomb blast

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Chief of Russia’s Troops of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence killed outside an apartment building.

A bomb hidden in an electric scooter has killed a senior general in charge of nuclear protection forces in Moscow, Russia’s investigative committee said.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of the Troops of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence, was killed on Tuesday outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt.

“Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection forces of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, and his assistant were killed,” the investigative committee said.

Photographs posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a shattered entrance to a building littered with rubble and two bodies lying in the blood-stained snow.

Reuters news agency footage from the scene showed a police cordon. A criminal case has been opened.

Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defence troops are special forces who operate under conditions of radioactive, chemical and biological contamination.

On Monday, Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kirillov in absentia with the alleged use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine said, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Russia denies those accusations.

In October, the United Kingdom sanctioned Kirillov and the nuclear protection forces for using riot control agents and multiple reports of the use of the toxic choking agent chloropicrin on the battlefield.