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As head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense troops, Igor Kirillov, who died in an explosion in Moscow, was accused by the West of overseeing the use of chemical weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said it was behind the explosion, which it described as a special operation against a legitimate target.
Kirillov and an assistant were killed by explosives placed on an electric scooter, according to Russian officials, which exploded as he left the building where he lived on Ryazansky Prospekt, southeast of Moscow.
He had become famous for his extravagant briefings at the Russian Ministry of Defence, leading the UK Foreign Office to label him a “important spokesperson for Kremlin disinformation”.
Kirillov was much more than just a spokesman: he headed Russia’s Timoshenko Academy of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection, before leading the Russian army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops in 2017.
The UK Foreign Office said that the force he commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what he said was the widespread use of riot control agents and “multiple reports of the use of the toxic asphyxiating agent chloropicrin”.
On the eve of his assassination, Ukraine’s SBU stated that he had been named in absentia in a criminal case over the “massive use” of banned chemical weapons on Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts.
It cited “more than 4,800 cases of the enemy using chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory since the start of the large-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
He said toxic substances had been used in drone attacks as well as in combat grenades.
Kirillov gained his notoriety since the beginning of the war with a series of claims directed at both Ukraine and the West, none of which were based on facts.
Among his most scandalous claims was one that The United States had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.. It was used in an attempt to justify a large-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022.
He presented documents in March 2022 that he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion, February 24, which were expanded upon by pro-Kremlin media but denied by independent experts.
Kirillov’s notorious accusations against Ukraine continued this year.
Last month he stated that “one of the priority objectives” of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Russia’s Kursk border region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant.
He presented a slide presentation, supposedly based on a Ukrainian report, which stated that in the event of an accident, only Russian territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination.
One of the themes repeated by Kirillov was that Ukraine was trying to develop a “dirty bomb.”
Two years ago he alleged that “two organizations in Ukraine have specific instructions to create the so-called ‘dirty bomb’. This work is in its final stage.”
His claims were rejected by Western countries as “transparently false.”
But Kirillov’s claims led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia was suggesting that kyiv was preparing such a weapon, it meant only one thing: that Russia was already preparing it.
Kirillov returned to his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time alleging the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.
kyiv, he claimed, was violating the International Chemical Weapons Convention with a variety of substances with the help of Western countries, including the psychochemical warfare agent BZ, as well as hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.
Kremlin loyalists see his death as a blow, but also as proof that Ukraine has the ability to target high-profile officials in Moscow.
The deputy chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, said his death was an “irreparable loss.”