Career took him from Germany to Russia

Russian general dies in attack

“Cruel and inhuman”: who was Igor Kirillov?

Igor Kirillov is dead. The suspected war criminal and spreader of Russian disinformation had accused the West of terrible crimes.

In Moscow, the prominent general Igor Kirillov was killed in a bomb attack in front of his home. Investigators classified the explosion, which also killed Kirillov’s aide, as a terrorist attack. The 54-year-old was one of the best-known faces of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, was a prominent warmonger and was on international sanctions lists.

Igor Kirillov was born in the western Russian city of Kostroma. He joined the Soviet military in 1987 and served as commander of the Group of Soviet Troops in Germany (GSTD) from 1991. The stationed soldiers secured the internal German border and enforced the military and political interests of the Soviet Union abroad. Kirillov was stationed in Germany until 1994, when the GSTD left the country.

After returning to Russia, Kirillov studied at the military academy and steadily rose up the Russian military hierarchy. In 2017, he finally took over the leadership of the NBC defense troops of the Russian armed forces as a major general. In this position he was responsible for protecting against threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

After the start of the Russian war of aggression, Kirillov took on a public role. At press conferences he presented allegations against Ukraine and its Western allies. He claimed that the USA was operating secret biolaboratories in Ukraine. Viruses of dangerous diseases that could be transmitted by mosquitoes are examined there. Kirillov accused the USA of wanting to infect Russian soldiers with the prepared mosquitoes.

In August 2023, the major general claimed that the United States had established a “pandemic preparedness department.” They would work on virus mutations that would initiate a new pandemic.

Kirillov also claimed that Ukraine was working on a so-called dirty bomb. Dirty bombs are weapons of mass destruction with conventional explosive devices mixed with radioactive material.

Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin had made identical accusations against Ukraine based on Kirillov’s publicly presented reports. He didn’t provide any evidence for this either.

After his death, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the general as a “dauntless fighter.” Kirillov made public the “lethal activity of American biolaboratories in Ukraine.”

Because of his involvement in the war of aggression, he was placed on the international sanctions list. Canada, Ukraine and, in October of this year, Great Britain also sanctioned him. The reason for this was the use of grenades with irritant or tear gas as well as chemical weapons such as the asphyxiant chloropicrin, which was first used in the First World War. British Foreign Minister David Lammy declared that Russian war tactics were “cruel and inhumane.”

Kiev’s secret service SBU had made similar allegations against Kirillov the day before the attack in Moscow in which the major general and his adjutant were murdered. According to Ukrainian intelligence, more than 4,800 uses of “chemical munitions” have been documented by the Russian army since the start of the Russian offensive. The “war criminal” Kirillov is partly responsible for this.

The production and use of chemical weapons for military purposes are prohibited by international conventions. Russia has repeatedly stated that it has eliminated its chemical weapons.

The Ukrainian secret service SBU unofficially claimed responsibility for the murder after the crime. “Kirillov was a war criminal and a perfectly legitimate target because he ordered the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian soldiers,” an SBU source said, according to several Ukrainian media outlets.

In the past few days, several people who are important to the Russian war effort and who are viewed as war criminals in Ukraine have been killed on the Russian side. These include a rocket designer and the former head of a prisoner of war camp.

In Russia there had already been attacks on high-ranking military officials and propagandists during the war in the past. The power apparatus in Moscow repeatedly blamed Ukrainian secret services for this.