Why Ukraine killed Igor Kirillov

Another one down. This morning, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of RKhBZ, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops, was heading out of his block of flats in Moscow’s Ryazansky Avenue, accompanied by his aide, when a bomb placed inside an electric scooter exploded. Both men were killed in the latest Ukrainian assassination operation targeting Russian officers accused of war crimes.

The timing was hardly coincidental. The 54-year-old Kirillov has been under British sanctions since 2017, both because of RKhBZ’s activities (including supporting the Syrian use of chemical weapons) and also his role as a propagandist, spreading such falsehoods as the claim that Ukraine hosted secret western biological warfare laboratories. However, the day before, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had charged him in absentia, as ‘responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons.’ Kyiv has claimed that more than 2,000 Ukrainian troops had required hospital treatment over the course of the war because of the use of the choking agents, first tear gas and later the more serious chloropicrin, an oily substance which saw wide use in world war one.