In the third high-profile casualty in a year, a Russian general has been killed in an explosion in a car in Moscow. Russian authorities have said Ukraine could be responsible.
In the third such high-profile casualty over the past year, a Russian general was on Monday killed in an explosion in a car in Moscow.
Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov died after an explosive device detonated underneath his car in Moscow, according to Associated Press.
Acknowledging Sarvarov’s death in the blast, the Russian authorities said Ukraine could be behind the act.
“Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of enquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services,” said Svetlana Petrenko, the Spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee, as per the AP.
The Russia’s Investigative Committee is the nation’s top criminal investigation agency.
At the time of his death, Sarvarov was the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian military — a role he had held for nine years. Previously, as per the Russian state media, he was part of Russian operations in Syria in support of then-dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The news of Sarvarov’s killing has come amid reports of another high-profile Russian fatality. For days, unconfirmed reports have been swirling that a Ukrainian strike on a Russian ship has recently killed Andrey Averyanov, the head of the covert operations unit at GRU, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. He has been previously linked to Salisbury poisonings in 2018, the suspected assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023, and an explosion in the Czech Republic in 2014.
Last year, Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, the then-chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological, and chemical forces, was killed on December 17 when a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building exploded. Ukraine had taken responsibility for the attack.
Then, earlier this year in April, Lt Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the Russian military, was killed when an explosive device placed in his car exploded parked near his apartment building.
In Kirillov’s case, an Uzbek man was arrested. A suspect was also arrested in the case of Moskalik.
After Kirillov’s killing, President Vladimir Putin had slammed Russian agencies for the “major blunder” and said they should learn from it and improve their efficiency, according to AP.
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