{"id":284569,"date":"2026-02-06T21:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284569\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T21:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T21:29:07","slug":"russian-general-remains-in-coma-after-moscow-shooting-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284569\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian general remains in coma after Moscow shooting \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A top Russian<\/a> military official who plays a significant role in the country\u2019s intelligence services has been taken to hospital after being shot in Moscow, state media has reported.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant general Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several times on the stairwell of his apartment on Friday by an unknown gunman in the northwest of the city and remains in critical condition, according to reports.<\/p>\n

Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Kremlin<\/a> Ukrainian figure close to Alekseyev said the general had undergone surgery and remained in a coma.<\/p>\n

No party has claimed responsibility for shooting Alekseyev, but suspicion in Moscow fell on Kyiv. Ukrainian<\/a> intelligence agencies have targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials since the start of the war, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov<\/a>, called the shooting a \u201cterrorist attack\u201d, claiming without evidence it was intended to derail talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US to end the war. \u201cThis terrorist attack once again confirmed the Zelenskiy<\/a> regime\u2019s focus on constant provocations, aimed in turn at derailing the negotiation process,\u201d Lavrov said in Moscow.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian-born Alekseyev is a deputy director of Russia\u2019s military intelligence agency, the GRU, a unit in the defence ministry known for organising covert operations abroad, including assassinations, sabotage and espionage.<\/p>\n

He was one of the top officers providing Vladimir Putin<\/a> with intelligence for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

He has also been widely described as a key figure overseeing the country\u2019s private military companies and was among the senior officials dispatched to negotiate with Yevgeny Prigozhin<\/a> during the Wagner group\u2019s brief mutiny in the summer of 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Prigozhin\u2019s revolt, Alekseyev was widely believed to have fallen out of favour in Moscow and was reported to have been briefly detained over his links to Wagner, yet he ultimately retained his posts.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ukraine-Russia talks in Abu Dhabi conclude with prisoner exchangeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Alekseyev is under sanctions from Washington for his alleged involvement in efforts to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election. The UK also placed sanctions on him over the deadly 2018 Novichok nerve agent attack<\/a> in Salisbury.<\/p>\n

Without explicitly claiming responsibility, Denys Prokopenko, the commander of Ukraine\u2019s Azov regiment, wrote on X that if Alekseyev survived the attack, he would \u201cnever sleep peacefully again\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo war criminal who has killed and tortured Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, destroyed Ukrainian cities, abducted Ukrainian children, or committed other crimes against the Ukrainian people will ever feel safe,\u201d Prokopenko added.<\/p>\n

The shooting came a day after Russian and Ukrainian delegations \u2013 including Alekseyev\u2019s direct superior, Igor Kostyukov \u2013 met in Abu Dhabi, where both sides spoke of apparent progress<\/a> in the peace talks.<\/p>\n

Previous peace efforts have broken down over Russia\u2019s maximalist territorial demands on Ukraine, with Moscow repeatedly rejecting Kyiv\u2019s calls for an immediate ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Ukraine has targeted at least three Russian generals in the Moscow region over the past year, though such operations have typically involved explosives.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Number of Ukrainians killed in war with Russia estimated at 55,000, says ZelenskiyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Little is publicly known about the clandestine networks believed to be behind assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure inside Russia and in Russian-controlled territories.<\/p>\n

Alekseyev\u2019s shooting will be seen as the latest failure of Russia\u2019s security services to protect senior military personnel deep inside the country. While details of who carried out the attack and how it was organised remain unclear, Russian military bloggers have criticised apparent security lapses, questioning how a gunman was able to enter the apartment building undetected.<\/p>\n

Andrei Soldatov, an independent expert on Russia\u2019s security services, called the attack \u201cincredible sloppiness\u201d. \u201cOne would have expected them to scale up protection for top military brass,\u201d he wrote on social media. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A top Russian military official who plays a significant role in the country\u2019s intelligence services has been taken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[605,42,22672,43,3589,1390,40,38,41,39,9688,5936,58419,137005],"class_list":{"0":"post-284569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-elon-musk","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-kremlin","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-starlink","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories","18":"tag-ukraine-crisis","19":"tag-vladimir-putin","20":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","21":"tag-yevgeny-prigozhin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}