Russia says it is suspected that General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's chemical weapons unit, was killed

Moscow – Russia's security service said on Wednesday it had arrested a suspect in the killing of a top general in a bomb blast in Moscow. The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen who the agency said was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.

Ukrainian security sources told CBS News on Monday that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was behind the explosion that killed Lt. General Igor Kirillov. The claim could not be independently verified, but Russian officials quickly vowed to retaliate against Ukrainian leaders.

Russia's Federal Security Service did not name the suspect, but said he was born in 1995. According to the FSB statement, the suspect said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services.

“Kirillov was a war criminal and a completely legitimate target, because he gave orders to use prohibited chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military,” an informed source in the SBU told CBS News. “Such a tactical end waiting for everyone to kill the Ukrainians. Reparations for war crimes are inevitable.”

Kirillov was killed by a bomb hidden in an electric scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine's security service brought criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack.

The FSB said the suspect was promised a reward of $100,000 and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov. They said, acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he built a homemade explosive device. Then he put the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance of the residential building where Kirillov lived.

The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that streamed video from the scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. When Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb.

According to the FSB statement, the suspect faces “a sentence of up to life imprisonment”.

Kirillov, 54, was the head of the Russian military's radiation, biological and chemical defense forces. Either Kirillov himself or his military unit has been authorized by several countries, including the US, Britain and Canada, to use chemical weapons. on the battlefield in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine's SBU opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

Ukraine's SBU has said it has recorded more than 4,800 times Russia has used chemical weapons on the battlefield since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack in February 2022. in May, the US State Department launched. announce sanctions against Kirillov's unit, saying that the US had documented the use of chloropicrin, a poisonous gas first used in World War I, against Ukrainian soldiers.

Russia has denied that any chemical weapons were used in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat, which Kirillov is said to have behind the spread of that propaganda.

Kirillov, who had been in office since April 2017, was accused by the US government of helping to spread disinformation about biological weapons and research.

In March 2023, about a year in Russia full-scale attackthe The US State Department said Kirillov had “significantly increased his involvement in the media” to produce numerous unsubstantiated claims that the US government had been involved in the creation of both the mpox virus and COVID-19, and that the US is “developing biological weapons capable of selectively targeting ethnic groups. “

“The US Government is concerned that this false statement could be a prelude to a false flag operationwhere Russia itself uses biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and then tries to blame Ukraine and/or the United States,” the State Department said at the time .

The bomb used in Tuesday's attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Pictures from the scene showed broken windows and broken brickwork.

Russia's main state investigative agency said it was looking into Kirillov's death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.