The News
Russia’s security services have detained a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan in the assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who led Russia’s chemical weapons program, the BBC reported.
Kirillov and his assistant were killed by a bomb strapped to an e-scooter in Moscow Tuesday. Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a statement, Russia’s FSB said the man was arrested on suspicion of “committing a terrorist act,” and that during interrogation he confessed, “he had been recruited by the Ukrainian special services.”
In a video published by the FSB, the Uzbek man appears to say he was offered $100,000 and permission to move to the European Union in exchange for the killing.
Kirillov is the most senior Russian military figure assassinated since the war with Ukraine began; chemical weapons have purportedly been used more than 4,000 times in Ukraine since the war started, a Kyiv-issued report found in November.