Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow says Uzbek suspect arrested over killing of general

For today’s Guardian newsletter, Nimo Omer spoke with the Guardian’s Russian affairs correspondent, Pjotr Sauer, about the significance of this attack and its potential ramifications:

Ukrainian officials say Kirillov, who had been the head of Russia’s nuclear protection forces since 2017, was targeted specifically because he presided over “the massive use of banned chemical weapons” against Ukraine’s military. According to the SBU, chemical weapons were used more than 4,800 times since the start of the war – and Ukraine placed the blame directly on Kirillov.

Kyiv says that Moscow’s use of such weapons has become “systemic”. The UK and US have also accused Russia of using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield; Washington sanctioned Russia for the use of chloropicrin, an agent notorious from the first world war, against Ukrainian troops; and the UK sanctioned Kirillov directly in October, stating that he was “responsible for helping deploy … inhumane chemical weapons” on the battlefields of Ukraine.

“There’s a second reason why Ukraine targeted him,” Pjotr adds: his media profile. Kirillov became known for his outrageous briefings that falsely accused Ukraine of various crimes including developing a “dirty” radioactive bomb. Some claims verged on the “completely ridiculous”, Pjotr says, such as when Kirillov said that Ukraine was working with the US to develop drones that could give malaria to Russian soldiers.

How significant is this assassination?

Less than a day before his killing, the SBU issued an arrest warrant for Kirillov for alleged war crimes. His death is a symbolic win for Kyiv as “it shows that Ukraine’s hand reaches very far and that they have men operating within Russia”, Pjotr says.

“This will send shock waves in the Russian military establishment. I spoke to a former defence official this morning who said that many were shaken within the defence ministry that such a senior official was killed in Moscow,” he adds. “Other officials will probably get around-the-clock security now because of this.”

It is not going to tip the scale of how the war is going – Russia is on the offensive and is making territorial gains. “But I think Ukraine is trying to show that everyone who is responsible for the war will eventually be punished one way or another, and if they aren’t able to prosecute them, they will find other ways to punish these men,” Pjotr says.

The news will lead to a morale boost in Kyiv and embarrass and anger Russian authorities, who are treating the killing as a terrorist attack.

How did Ukraine pull this off?

There are a number of different theories circulating as to how Kyiv was able to execute this plan.

“Ukraine could have had someone on the ground or the device could have been detonated from a distance. There is also a chance that Ukraine used Russian anti-Putin resistance fighters to do this,” Pjotr says.

Ukraine has already demonstrated that it has the ability to carry out extraterritorial killings. Last week, Kyiv claimed responsibility for killing a senior scientist who was working on weapons and rockets that Russia uses in its war in Ukraine.

And in 2022, Russia accused the Ukrainian special services of killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist Putin ally Alexander Dugin, in a car bomb in Moscow. Ukraine denied it carried out the attack.

Even though Russia knows that Ukraine is capable of such operations, it is clearly not able to prevent them, Pjotr says: “Ukraine is really sending a signal that they are not only going to kill generals and military figures on the battlefield, but they will also target those responsible for the war inside Russia.”

The response inside Russia

Russia said on Tuesday only that it had “opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen”. Russia’s RIA news agency reported that the former president Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Russian security official, said Ukraine’s military and political leadership faced revenge.

The Kremlin has also not yet indicated how it will retaliate. “Russia has been doing its own hybrid campaign against the west,” Pjotr says. There was a foiled plot to assassinate the head of a German weapons manufacturing company and attempts at sabotaging key undersea cables. “I think that will continue and probably escalate after this,” he says.

Although there were reports that residents were frightened by the explosion, the incident will probably only “harden the mood in Moscow”, Pjotr adds, “with Russians demanding more rockets fired at Ukraine”.

Russian officials will use this attack to further justify their war in Ukraine and reject any calls for a ceasefire, which they have been doing anyway. “They will use this to rally the nation around the war and insist that they have to keep fighting for regime change and make other massive demands from Ukraine,” Pjotr says.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Russia will raise the asssassination in Moscow of top Russian general Igor Kirillov by Ukraine at the UN security council on 20 December.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said everyone involved in the killing would be found and punished.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who was the chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed in Moscow on Tuesday.

Hello and welcome to the Ukraine live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you all the latest developments throughout the day.

We start with news that Russia has detained an Uzbek citizen who investigators believe placed the bomb which killed Lt Gen Igor Kirillov on the instructions of Ukraine’s security service, the country’s investigative committee has said.

The 29-year-old had been recruited by Ukrainian special services and promised $100,000 and travel to the European Union, the news agency Tass reported, citing the country’s domestic spy agency, the FSB.

The man was arrested in the village of Chernoye in the Balashikha district of Moscow, the news agency Ria reported, citing interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk.

Kirillov, the head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, was killed in an explosion along with his assistant as the two men left a building in a residential area in south-east Moscow on Tuesday.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said Kyiv was behind the attack. See the link below to follow the story as it develops:

In other news today:

• Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, will travel to Kyiv and several other European capitals in early January on a fact-finding trip, according to two sources with knowledge of planning. They said he would visit senior leaders in Kyiv, and his team was working to set up meetings with leaders in other European capitals, such as Rome and Paris, though plans could change.

• North Korean forces have taken “several hundred” casualties fighting against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region, according to a senior US military official. This “would include everything from … light wounds up to being KIA [killed in action]”, the official said, with soldiers of “all ranks” among the casualties. “These are not battle-hardened troops. They haven’t been in combat before … [that is] why they have been suffering the casualties that they have at the hands of the Ukrainians.” Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, said Russia has used North Korean troops at the heart of an “intensive offensive” in Kursk over several days.

• Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who was blown up in Moscow on Tuesday by Ukrainian intelligence, headed the Russian military’s radiological, chemical and biological defence programme – a unit blamed by Ukraine, the US and UK for involvement in the use of chemicals on the battlefield, Dan Sabbagh explains. Ukrainian soldiers report a persistent use of chemical weapons, mostly teargas, whose deployment on the battlefield is illegal. The US and UK go further in their accusations and say Russia is using another toxic agent, chloropicrin, first employed to gruesome effect in the trenches of the first world war.

• Nato has taken over as planned from the US in coordinating western military aid to Ukraine, a source said on Tuesday, in a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against Donald Trump. Nato’s military headquarters, Shape, confirmed its Ukraine mission was assuming responsibilities from the US and international organisations. “The work of NSATU … is designed to place Ukraine in a position of strength, which puts Nato in a position of strength to keep safe and prosperous its one billion people in both Europe and North America,” said US army Gen Christopher G Cavoli, the supreme allied commander Europe. “This is a good day for Ukraine and a good day for Nato.”

• The headquarters of Nato’s new Ukraine mission, dubbed Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU), is located at Clay Barracks, a US base in the German town of Wiesbaden. It takes over from the US-led Ramstein group. NSATU is set to have a total strength of about 700 personnel, including troops stationed at Shape in Belgium and logistics hubs in Poland and Romania. Diplomats acknowledge that benefits of the handover to Nato could be lessened if the US under Trump slashes support. The president-elect has previously threatened to pull out of Nato and invited Vladimir Putin to attack its members if they do not contribute more funding.

• Britain on Tuesday sanctioned 20 ships it said had been carrying illicit Russian oil. “As [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s oil revenues continue to fuel the fires of his illegal war, Ukrainian families are enduring cold, dark nights, often without heating, light or electricity, targeted by Russia’s relentless missile attacks,” said Keir Starmer, the British prime minister.

• The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday it had downed 20 Russia-launched drones. It said on the Telegram messenger that Russia had launched a total of 31 drones and an additional 10 did not reach their targets.