Spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said on Telegram that on Tuesday a bomb was detonated placed on an electric scooter that was parked at the entrance of a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue, in the east of the capital. “As a result of the incident, Kirillov and his assistant died,” she said, adding that the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case for the assassination, and that investigating judges, forensic science experts and other operational agents are working on the scene.

The emergency services said that according to preliminary information the explosive device had an explosive power equivalent to 200 grams of trilithon. The blast blew out windows on several floors of a 25-story building opposite the site of the explosion.

Investigators are studying surveillance camera footage in the area.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirilov, born on July 13th, 1970, gained a lot of media visibility in recent years for repeatedly accusing Ukraine and the United States of preparing attacks with chemical and biological weapons.

The vice president of the Russian Senate, Konstantin Kosachov, was one of the first to react to the news. On his social networks, Kosachov said that he felt “shocked” and that it is “an irrecoverable loss. (…) The murderers will be punished without a doubt and without mercy,” he promised.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Kirilov “has been systematically and with evidence in hand, over many years, exposing the crimes of Anglo-Saxons: provocations with chemical weapons in Syria, and British manipulations with banned chemical substances.” He also denounced the provocations in Salisbury and Amesbury, lethal activities of US biological laboratories in Ukraine and much more, the spokeswoman recalled.

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