| Ukrainian officials say Kirillov, who had been the head of Russia’s nuclear protection forces since 2017, was targeted specifically because he presided over “the massive use of banned chemical weapons” against Ukraine’s military. According to the SBU, chemical weapons were used more than 4,800 times since the start of the war – and Ukraine placed the blame directly on Kirillov. Kyiv says that Moscow’s use of such weapons has become “systemic”. The UK and US have also accused Russia of using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield; Washington sanctioned Russia for the use of chloropicrin, an agent notorious from the first world war, against Ukrainian troops; and the UK sanctioned Kirillov directly in October, stating that he was “responsible for helping deploy … inhumane chemical weapons” on the battlefields of Ukraine. “There’s a second reason why Ukraine targeted him,” Pjotr adds: his media profile. Kirillov became known for his outrageous briefings that falsely accused Ukraine of various crimes including developing a “dirty” radioactive bomb. Some claims verged on the “completely ridiculous”, Pjotr says, such as when Kirillov said that Ukraine was working with the US to develop drones that could give malaria to Russian soldiers. How significant is this assassination? Less than a day before his killing, the SBU issued an arrest warrant for Kirillov for alleged war crimes. His death is a symbolic win for Kyiv as “it shows that Ukraine’s hand reaches very far and that they have men operating within Russia”, Pjotr says. “This will send shock waves in the Russian military establishment. I spoke to a former defence official this morning who said that many were shaken within the defence ministry that such a senior official was killed in Moscow,” he adds. “Other officials will probably get around-the-clock security now because of this.” It is not going to tip the scale of how the war is going – Russia is on the offensive and is making territorial gains. “But I think Ukraine is trying to show that everyone who is responsible for the war will eventually be punished one way or another, and if they aren’t able to prosecute them, they will find other ways to punish these men,” Pjotr says. The news will lead to a morale boost in Kyiv and embarrass and anger Russian authorities, who are treating the killing as a terrorist attack. How did Ukraine pull this off? There are a number of different theories circulating as to how Kyiv was able to execute this plan. “Ukraine could have had someone on the ground or the device could have been detonated from a distance. There is also a chance that Ukraine used Russian anti-Putin resistance fighters to do this,” Pjotr says. Ukraine has already demonstrated that it has the ability to carry out extraterritorial killings. Last week, Kyiv claimed responsibility for killing a senior scientist who was working on weapons and rockets that Russia uses in its war in Ukraine. And in 2022, Russia accused the Ukrainian special services of killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist Putin ally Alexander Dugin, in a car bomb in Moscow. Ukraine denied it carried out the attack. Even though Russia knows that Ukraine is capable of such operations, it is clearly not able to prevent them, Pjotr says: “Ukraine is really sending a signal that they are not only going to kill generals and military figures on the battlefield, but they will also target those responsible for the war inside Russia.” The response inside Russia Russia said on Tuesday only that it had “opened a criminal case into the murder of two servicemen”. Russia’s RIA news agency reported that the former president Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Russian security official, said Ukraine’s military and political leadership faced revenge. The Kremlin has also not yet indicated how it will retaliate. “Russia has been doing its own hybrid campaign against the west,” Pjotr says. There was a foiled plot to assassinate the head of a German weapons manufacturing company and attempts at sabotaging key undersea cables. “I think that will continue and probably escalate after this,” he says. Although there were reports that residents were frightened by the explosion, the incident will probably only “harden the mood in Moscow”, Pjotr adds, “with Russians demanding more rockets fired at Ukraine”. Russian officials will use this attack to further justify their war in Ukraine and reject any calls for a ceasefire, which they have been doing anyway. “They will use this to rally the nation around the war and insist that they have to keep fighting for regime change and make other massive demands from Ukraine,” Pjotr says. | 