A senior Russian military official, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, has been rushed to hospital after being shot in Moscow, state media reported, citing investigators.
A career military officer, Alexeyev is deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff at the Defence Ministry.
He led intelligence operations during the Russian intervention in Syria to support the now-ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office says Vladimir Alexeyev (right) was shot several times by an unknown assailant who fled the scene. (AFP: Razgruzka Vagnera)
When Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a short-lived mutiny in June 2023, Alexeyev was one of the top officials who were sent to negotiate with him.
President Vladimir Putin was informed about the attack, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who added that law enforcement agencies needed to step up protection of senior military officers during the conflict in Ukraine.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office said Alexeyev had been shot several times at a residential building in north-west Moscow by an unknown assailant who fled the scene.
“Investigative actions and operational search measures are being carried out to identify the person or persons involved in committing the aforementioned crime,” Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.
Several senior Russian officers have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine, with Moscow blaming the attacks on Kyiv.
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In some cases, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility.
The most recent officer to be killed was the head of the General Staff’s army training directorate, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, who was killed by a bomb under his car on December 22.
Last month a Russian court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison for the 2024 killing of the head of the Russian army’s radiological, chemical and biological defence forces.
The general, Igor Kirillov, was killed when a booby-trapped scooter exploded as he left an apartment block in Moscow, in an attack Kyiv said it had orchestrated.
Reuters/AFP