The roots of the Russian invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep. The current conflict is not just about one country suffering to take over another; This is – in the words of one US official – a replacement for the “world order. ” Here are some helpful stories to make sense of it all.
Kyiv – A senior Russian army officer accused of using banned chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops was killed Tuesday in Moscow. A source in the Ukrainian security service told NPR that security facilities were the cause of the murder.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov had commanded the Russian military’s nuclear, biological and chemical cover forces since 2017. Kirillov and one of his collaborators died after an explosive device placed on a scooter exploded.
The murder took place near the front of a residential building in southeast Moscow where Kirillov lived, according to Russian state media. A video shared on Russian social media, which NPR can independently verify, shows smashed windows and burned buildings in the site.
Kirillov was killed a day after Ukrainian security forces filed charges against him in absentia for chemical weapons banned in that war.
The Ukrainian security source, who showed NPR that she was the perpetrator of the murder, spoke on condition of anonymity because the user does not have the right to reveal the information.
Ukraine’s Security Ministry on Monday published an investigation claiming that Russia had used chemical weapons about 5,000 times against the Ukrainian military since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Artem Vlasiuk, a Ukrainian colonel in the army’s Directorate of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Protection, explained at a press conference in Kiev last week the effects of this use on Ukrainian troops.
“More than 2,000 soldiers with symptoms of chemical poisoning have been sent to military facilities,” Vlasiuk said. He noted that the chemicals included CS gas, or 2-Chlorobenzalmonononitrile, commonly known as tear gas, a chemical agent banned in international warfare.
The United States has accused Russia of using the chemical weapon chloropicrin, an asphyxiating agent, against Ukrainian troops.
Russia denies using chemical weapons in Ukraine and has claimed that Ukrainian forces used poisonous agents during the war, which kyiv denies.
Writing on Telegram, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, called Kirillov “a true patriot of Russia” and called his assassination a “terrorist attack. ” He accused Ukraine of seeking to “prolong war and death” and “trying to justify their petty lifestyles to their Western masters. ”
He vowed that Ukrainian leaders would “pay in full” for Kirillov’s assassination.
Kirillov is already under sanctions from several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada. He is the highest-ranking Russian army officer killed outside the front lines since the 2022 invasion.
Ukraine rarely publicly confirms the killings. Another targeted killing unofficially linked to Ukraine is that of the daughter of a Russian nationalist, killed in a car bomb attack in 2022 that investigators may have targeted her father. And a popular Russian army blogger was killed last spring after a statuette he had been given exploded at a party in St. Petersburg.
Volodymyr Solohub, Polina Lytvynova and Hanna Palamarenko contributed from Kyiv.
An earlier edition of this tale incorrectly called Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov.