Russian authorities arrested an Uzbekistan national on Wednesday who they say admitted to killing Russian general Igor Kirillov in a bombing on Tuesday.
The 29-year-old suspect, who was not named, was captured in a village on the outskirts of Moscow following the assassination.
Russian authorities claimed that the suspect confessed to being hired by Ukraine’s military intelligence service, known as the HUR, to carry out the attack.
The assassination came just a day after Ukraine accused Kirillov — who was the head of Russia’s nuclear, biological, and chemical protection forces — of war crimes involving the use of banned chemical weapons on the battlefield.
The suspect allegedly traveled to Moscow and placed a bomb under a scooter that was near Kirillov’s home. When Kirillov and one of his aides walked outside of the building where the scooter was located, the bomb detonated, killing both men.
The suspect drove a rental car to the scene and used a live video camera to give Ukraine’s intelligence services a live feed monitoring the general’s movements.
He was promised $100,000 and help getting to Europe, The New York Times reported.
Kirillov was accused by Ukraine of using the banned chemical weapon chloropicrin nearly 5,000 times against troops in Ukraine. He was sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K. for using the weapon.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, as he gave orders to use banned chemical substances against the Ukrainian military,” a Ukrainian official told CNN. “Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”
Ukraine has killed other top Russian military officials in targeted assassinations, including two in just the last month.
Ukraine’s security services took credit for the assassination of a senior commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Russian-occupied Crimea and the assassination of a senior Russian naval officer who ordered missile strikes on civilian targets.
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