MOSCOW: Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian leadership would face imminent revenge for the killing of a top Russian general, RIA news agency reported.

“Realising the inevitability of its military defeat, it launches cowardly and despicable strikes in peaceful cities,” he said.

Top Russian general accused by Kyiv of chemical weapons crimes is killed by bomb in Moscow

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside an apartment building in Moscow along with his assistant, Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said earlier on Tuesday.

A source in the Security Service of Ukraine said it had killed him.