The killing of a Russian general shows Ukraine’s spies remain lethal

UKRAINE’S DOMESTICSBUSBUSBUTNTSBUHURSBUHURSBUHUR security service, known as the , wasted no time. On December 16th the accused General Igor Kirillov, the man in charge of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, of the “mass use” of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine. A day later Mr Kirillov was dead, the victim of an early-morning explosion near a residential building in Moscow. Footage shared online showed two bodies, presumably those of the general and his aide, who also died in the attack, sprawled on the pavement alongside a burnt-out electric scooter.A source in the claimed the agency was responsible for the attack, in which explosives fastened to the scooter were detonated remotely when Mr Kirillov and his driver approached their car. The general “was a war criminal and a perfectly legitimate target”, the source said. “Such a disgraceful end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians.” The blast was small as such things go: an improvised explosive device containing the equivalent of approximately 300g of .Ukrainian officials say they hold Mr Kirillov responsible for 4,800 incidents involving the use of chemical munitions against the country’s forces since the start of the war. Over 2,000 troops have been hospitalised as a result of such attacks, they claim, and three have died.Earlier this year, Britain placed sanctions on the general for overseeing the use of banned weapons and spreading disinformation. Mr Kirillov had appeared regularly on Russian television since the start of the war, making baseless allegations that Ukraine was developing chemical and biological weapons and that America had set up military biolabs in Ukraine.Mr Kirillov’s assassination may be the most brazen and high-profile carried out by the Ukrainians to date. . The ’s secretive fifth counter-intelligence directorate, which has a mandate to conduct targeted killing abroad, and , Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency, are both active on Russian soil. The two agencies have sophisticated networks and ways of working inside the country. Their most recent prior target was probably Mikhail Shatsky, a weapons expert who helped Russia modernise the cruise missiles used against Ukraine and who was gunned down near his home last week.Ukrainian agents have assassinated dozens of Russian commanders, officials, suspected collaborators and propagandists since the start of the war, mostly in occupied Ukraine. American spooks believe Ukraine was also involved in the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of the Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, in 2022. Mr Dugin may have been the intended target on that occasion.Earlier in their history, agents moved between the ’s fifth directorate and . Today the two outfits are in competition. Oleksandr Poklad, a deputy head of the overlooking the fifth directorate, and , head of , are on especially strained terms. There are rumours that Mr Poklad is angling to replace Mr Budanov, who has fallen out of favour with some in the presidential office.Regardless of rivalries between agencies, Mr Kirillov’s assassination shows that Ukraine’s intelligence services remain lethal. The message Ukrainian agents have sent is that they can target the Russian armed forces’ top brass, even in Moscow. Russia, which has not been able to mount a similar campaign inside Ukraine, will probably respond as it has since the start of the war: by bombing Ukrainian civilians.