The explosion that killed Igor Kirillov on Tuesday seems to have been the most ambitious targeted attack of the war so far on Russian soil, carried out by the Ukrainian security services (as a source familiar with the operation has claimed) and hitting not only at the core of Russia’s military, but close to the heart of the nation’s capital.
An exploding scooter taking out a senior general is certainly not a good look for Russia’s beefed-up internal security apparatus. But it’s also a measure of the urgency Ukraine feels when it comes to wrestling back the initiative in this war by any means possible, as the clock ticks down to the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and Russia continues its steady advance on the eastern front.
Kirillov, as the head of Russia’s radiological, biological and chemical protection troops, was believed by Ukraine and its allies to have played a particularly destructive role in the conflict, responsible for the widespread use of chemical substances and riot agents such as CS gas on the battlefield. He was also an expert at deploying disinformation, an essential tool for maintaining support for the war at home. In one of his final public appearances in November, he claimed Ukraine’s main goal when it invaded Russia’s Kursk region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant, and reupped a two-year-old Russian conspiracy theory that Ukraine was planning to build a dirty bomb.
Assassinations of key military figures on Russian soil, either directly or indirectly linked to Ukraine, have been a feature of this war. In July last year, a former submarine commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was shot in the southern city of Krasnodar while out for a run. And yet Kirillov’s death marks the fourth incident in the last two months alone.
In October, Dmitry Golenkov, a pilot with Russia’s 52nd heavy bomber regiment was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in Russia’s Bryansk region. In mid-November, a source with Ukraine’s security services told CNN it was responsible for a car bomb in Sevastopol, Crimea, that killed the chief of staff of Black Sea Fleet missile ships. And less than a week ago, the deputy chief designer of Russia’s Mars Design Bureau was shot in a Moscow park. CNN’s Ukrainian security source confirmed Kyiv was behind his killing, saying he was responsible for upgrading some of the cruise missiles fired at Ukraine.
Like all employees of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Kirillov is replaceable, and it’s unlikely his death will cause Russia to suddenly reverse course on chemical weapons. And yet, like many of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian soil, there’s an information component here – a signal to the Russian military that individuals are vulnerable, wherever they are, and to the Russian people – the latest attempt to puncture the facade that everything is going to plan.