MOSCOW: The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division was killed on Tuesday in a brazen attack in Moscow claimed by Kyiv — the most senior military figure assassinated in Russia yet as the Kremlin’s campaign in Ukraine drags on.

Igor Kirillov was killed along with his assistant when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off outside an apartment building in southeastern Moscow, Russian and Ukrainian officials said. The attack took place in a residential area in the capital a day after President Vladimir Putin boasted of Russian troop successes in Ukraine, nearly three years after the Kremlin sent soldiers into its pro-Western neighbour. Kirillov, 54, was the head of the Russian army’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit and was sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service told AFP it was behind the early morning explosion in what it called a “special operation”, calling Kirillov a “war criminal.” Russia’s Investigative Committee said that an “explosive device planted in a scooter parked near the entrance of a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow.”