The Russian authorities announced this Wednesday the arrest of a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, whom they consider suspected of having placed and detonated the bomb that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, on Tuesday. of the Russian army. According to the statement from the Russian Investigative Committee, a video in which a text is read on camera by its spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko, the detainee confessed during his arrest that “he was recruited by the Ukrainian special services” and placed both the explosive in a electric scooter next to the portal of the building as the camera that allowed the entrance to be monitored. Kirillov was the highest-ranking Russian military officer killed inside Russia by Ukraine.
The Ukrainian intelligence service (SBU) assumed responsibility for the murder, having accused Kirillov on Monday of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, something that Moscow denies.
The Telegram channel Baza, a medium with sources close to the Russian security forces, has published the identity of the suspect, Ajmad Kurbanov, and a video of his alleged confession with some marks on his face, the origin of which has not been clarified. In the recording, Kurbanov, handcuffed inside a vehicle, recounts the alleged operation in the Russian capital step by step.
“I came to Moscow following instructions from the Ukrainian special services,” says the suspect before saying that he first acquired the electric scooter and, months later, “the parts for the bomb arrived.” “Why did I do it? For this they offered me 100,000 dollars (95,000 euros) and a European passport,” he adds at the end of the video.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, which combines both prosecutorial and police powers, the suspect also took a rental car in which he installed a video surveillance camera. “The images were transmitted on-line to the organizers of the terrorist attack in the city of Dnipro. After receiving the video signal of the military’s departure, they detonated the explosive device remotely,” the Russian organization asserts.
Despite knowing the danger of the attack, the alleged suspect did not get very far. The Uzbek citizen was detained “in literally a few hours” on the outskirts of Moscow, in the Balashikha district, according to the newspaper. Kommersant. The newspaper’s sources indicate that the arrested person was identified as the last person to rent the car, which was examined by a police robot to check if it also had explosive devices.
Kurbanov faces a possible life sentence on terrorism and murder charges. The suspect will soon be at the disposal of the Moscow Basmanni court. Russian authorities claim to be in the process of “identifying other people involved in the organization of this crime.”
