A Russian general has been killed by a car bomb near Moscow, the country’s top criminal investigation agency says.
The death of Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik is the second such fatal attack on a top Russian military officer in four months.
The investigative committee said he was killed by an explosive device placed in his car in Balashikha, just outside the capital.
He was a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff of the Russian armed forces.
Flames and smoke rise from the scene. Pic: Ostorozhno Novostivia/AP
Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said the explosive device was rigged with shrapnel, adding that investigators were at the scene.
Videos published by Russian media outlets showed a vehicle burning in the courtyard of an apartment building.
The committee did not mention potential suspects.
It comes after Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was killed in December when a bomb hidden on an electric scooter parked outside his apartment building exploded as he left for his office.
The Russian authorities blamed Ukraine for the killing of Kirillov, and Ukraine’s security agency acknowledged that it was behind that attack.
Police and investigators at the site. Pic: AP
Kirillov was the chief of Russia’s radiation, biological and chemical protection forces, the special troops tasked with protecting the military from the enemy’s use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and ensuring operations in a contaminated environment.
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His assistant also died in the attack.
Friday’s bombing came as US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a US-brokered peace plan for Ukraine.
The meeting is their fourth encounter since February.
