The assassination of a top Russian general in Moscow is part of a campaign to track and kill Kremlin war criminals wherever they are in the world
Maxim Tucker
December 20, 2024
The Times
With cuts and bruises on his face that suggested his confession had been made under duress, Akhmad Kurbanov, a 29-year-old Uzbek, explained how he came to plant a bomb in the heart of Moscow that killed the highest-ranking general targeted by the Ukrainian secret service.
According to Russia’s FSB security service, Kurbanov said that on the promise of $100,000 and a European passport, he had planted 300g of explosive in an electric scooter that he parked outside the home of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces. He placed a dashboard camera on his rental car opposite the apartment to stream the blast to his handlers in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the FSB alleged.
Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, which claimed responsibility for the attack, and Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR, have already carried out a number of extrajudicial killings of Russian officers, Kremlin officials and collaborators. However, the general’s killing, on a weekday morning in President Putin’s capital, represented the most brazen assassination to date.
To Kyiv, it means no Russian is safe. The assassination, intelligence sources told The Times on Friday, is part of a campaign to hunt and kill Kremlin war criminals wherever they are in the world. “We are the new Mossad,” said a Ukrainian special forces officer involved in the targeting of Russian officers behind enemy lines. “No matter where you hide, or how long it takes, we will bring justice to you.”
Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency, is credited with dozens of overseas assassinations over the past six decades, killing weapons experts helping hostile powers and Nazis suspected of atrocities, from Brazil to Belgium.
Given the invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, President Zelensky’s pursuit of a ballistic missile programme and an increase in the number of long-range drone strikes on airbases, ammunition depots and oil refineries inside Russia, Kirillov’s death should demonstrate to President Putin that the cost of his war on Ukraine will increasingly be felt at home, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said.
Kurbanov’s confession to the FSB must be treated with caution, but even if he is the “fall guy” being used by either Kyiv or the Kremlin, his alleged recruitment would fit a well-established pattern in intelligence operations: enlisting disaffected young men for minor tasks and grooming them for a major operation.
The Ukrainians use anti-Putin Telegram channels to cultivate a following, then reach out online to those who are particularly engaged with promises of cash for minor tasks, such as spraying anti-Putin graffiti on government buildings. Often the channels are advertised on gambling websites.
The payments are made using cryptocurrencies and they grow as the risks the agent is asked to take increase. Agents can graduate from graffiti to spotting for artillery or missile attacks, then to more daring activities, such as an arson attack on an army recruitment centre, pouring sand in the petrol tank of a Russian military vehicle or sabotaging a railway junction.
Over time a relationship is formed and a proficient agent can be asked to take on still more complex and higher-risk tasks, such as delivering explosives. The Russians have used similar tactics to recruit agents inside Ukraine, with each side learning from the other’s methods.
On other occasions, such as the SBU’s attack on the Kerch bridge in October 2022, the person who ultimately delivers the bomb is duped into believing they are conveying a harmless item to the target. The driver of the truck bomb that severely damaged the bridge was killed in the blast.
Ukrainian special forces have also been tasked with killing Russian officers and Kremlin officials deep behind enemy lines. Last year the “Shaman” battalion, overseen by HUR, revealed to The Times that they had ambushed and killed a series of senior Russian officers, infiltrating Russian territory by flying low over the border in six-man teams using a Black Hawk helicopter.
HUR special forces teams have also been deployed to Mali, Sudan and Syria to kill Russian members of Wagner suspected of torturing and executing Ukrainian civilians during Russian occupation, intelligence sources said.
Mali cut diplomatic ties with Kyiv after HUR admitted it had assisted Tuareg-led separatists in ambushing and killing dozens of regime fighters and Russian mercenaries. The Tuaregs said in the aftermath of the attack that they had killed 84 Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers.
The killing of Kirillov, carried out a day after he was charged with war crimes related to chemical weapons attacks on Ukrainian troops, and the fact that it was immediately claimed by the SBU, was designed to send a message to the Russians, an SBU source said. “Kirillov was a war criminal with an absolutely legitimate goal, having given orders to defend the chemical defence against the Ukrainian military. Such an inglorious end awaits everyone who kills the Ukrainians. Payment for war atrocities is inevitable,” the source said.
Maxim Tucker was Kyiv correspondent for The Times between 2014 and 2017 and is now an editor on the foreign desk. He has returned to report from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. He advises on grantmaking in the former Soviet countries for the Open Society Foundations and prior to that was Amnesty International’s Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus. He has also written for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek and Politico.