An Uzbek national was offered $100,000 (£78,650) by Ukraine to assassinate the head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons unit, Moscow has claimed.
Russian police have arrested a 29-year-old suspect, who they say had been “recruited by Ukrainian special forces” and offered the money for the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov.
“On their instructions, he arrived in Moscow, received a powerful improvised explosive device and placed it on an electric scooter, which he parked near the entrance of Kirillov’s home,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Investigators said the suspect set up a camera in a rental car that broadcast live footage to a Ukrainian SBU intelligence service control centre in the city of Dnipro.
There, an SBU agent “remotely activated” the IED before dawn on Tuesday when Kirillov walked out of his apartment block, killing him and his assistant.
Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, is the highest-ranked military commander assassinated by the SBU – Alexander Nemenov/AFP
Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, is the highest-ranked military commander assassinated by the SBU.
The SBU has been waging a sophisticated assassination campaign throughout the near-three-year war in Ukraine that has killed dozens of Ukrainian collaborators, Russian military officers, Kremlin propagandists and scientists both in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine.
Later, in an FSB interrogation video, the arrested Uzbek man confessed that the assassination plot was several weeks in the making.
He said that he had arrived in Moscow on the “instructions of the Ukrainian special forces”, bought a scooter and then waited a “few months” for the bomb to arrive.
Russian police have arrested a 29-year-old suspect over Kirillov’s assassination – Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/AP
“They promised me $100,000 and a European passport,” he said in the video, wearing handcuffs and a torn jacket.
The suspect also appeared to contradict the statement from the Investigative Committee by saying that he triggered the IED, rather than an SBU agent in Ukraine.
It is unclear under what conditions the Uzbek man made his confession. Russian forces are known to torture crime suspects into confessions.
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported that the Uzbek man was arrested in the Balashikha district of Moscow, only a few miles from Ryazansky Prospekt, where Kirillov was killed.
Russia said the explosive device was placed on an electric scooter that was parked near the entrance of Kirillov’s home – AP
Kirillov was hated in Ukraine, which on Monday called him a war criminal for greenlighting the use of tear gas and other chemical weapons against its soldiers.
He was also a Kremlin propaganda mouthpiece, regularly accusing the US of setting up secret chemical weapons factories in Georgia and Ukraine – claims that Washington has called “fake lies”.
Uzbekistan has said that it has no information on the FSB’s suspect.
Since March, the Kremlin has cracked down on migrant labour from Central Asia, a traditional source, after four Tajiks were arrested for killing more than 140 people at a concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow.