Ukraine says it killed Igor Kirillov but there are several possibilities
It’s like a scene from a spy novel or a crime thriller.
Top military general Igor Kirillov and his assistant are assassinated just before daybreak by a bomb planted on a scooter lent up against his apartment building.
The trigger was remotely pulled as the pair left for work early in the morning and it was all caught on a hidden camera in a car across the street.
The final moments of Igor Kirillov and his assistant were captured by a camera in a car near by. (Social media via Reuters)
While the Ukrainian Government hasn’t officially confirmed it, sources inside the military have said Kyiv’s intelligence agency, the SBU, was responsible for the assassination.
But as the news broke of this high-profile murder, rumours swirled as to how Ukraine could possibly have pulled off the hit right in the heart of the Russian capital.
Because, surely, Russia would be running tight surveillance on enemy agents both off and on its territory and particularly this close to the Kremlin.
Indeed, Russia has arrested an Uzbekistan national who it says has confessed to the killing for cash.
Russian state media broadcast the suspect speaking in handcuffs, apparently confessing to the crime. (Russia 24 via Reuters)
But as with most espionage, experts say things aren’t necessarily as they appear.
Resistance fighters inside Russia
“All Ukrainian security forces … cooperate with internal Russian resistance, so we share some information with them … sometimes share people”, former Russian MP Ilya Ponomarev told the ABC.
Mr Ponomarev was a Russian MP for a decade but has lived in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv since the war broke out, running what he calls a shadow Russian parliament consisting of about 130 other exiled politicians.
He also coordinates several volunteer groups of Russian nationals who are fighting against the Putin regime from within Russia.
“Russian resistance groups basically cannot operate without outside assistance, because … they need to procure weapons, explosives … different material support they need from the outside. And the only place where it can come from, obviously, is Ukraine.
“From the other side, for Ukrainian special services, it’s very hard to operate without having people on the ground which can help to do certain things.
“So, in this case, it was obviously the same.”
Investigators combed the scene for hours for clues following the assassination. (AP)
He estimates there are between 10,000 and 20,000 such resistance fighters operating inside Russia against Vladimir Putin’s reign, with some carrying out such attacks on behalf of Ukrainian forces.
Without help from forces inside Ukraine, Mr Ponomarev says, their mission can be difficult to fulfil and the same goes for Ukraine trying to take out targets in Russia.
“They are fighting against terrorists, which is what this regime is right now, and that’s being internationally acknowledged by more and more countries. They’re fighting against war criminals. And that’s their mission in life”, he said.
Video raises questions about ‘contract killer’ theory
The use of resistance fighters is one theory as to how things unfolded on that Moscow street on Monday.
But Russia has its own theory. Authorities there claim the 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan arrested over the plot was a hired assassin.
The man has, according to Moscow, confessed to killing the general for a bounty of $160,000 and the promise of citizenship in a European city.
In a video published on Russian state TV, the suspect named by Russian media as Akhmad Kurbanov is seen sitting in a van describing his actions.
The scooter at the centre of the deadly plot. (AP)
Speaking in Russian, he says he came to Moscow on the orders of Ukraine’s SBU, bought an electric scooter and then received an improvised explosive device to carry out the kill months later.
It was not clear what conditions the man was speaking under, and several news agencies said they couldn’t verify the video’s authenticity.
But Mr Ponomarev isn’t convinced the general’s murder was carried out by a contract killer, because he says they don’t ordinarily film their work.
“People are fighting for their ideas, and they would be very pissed off hearing them being called mercenaries or killers or assassins or whatever, they are the resistance groups they are. They are politically motivated. They are fighting against this regime,” he said.
The brazen assassination of General Igor Kirillov is the highest profile hit since the war began.
It is one of a string of targeted killings Ukraine has successfully pulled off on Russian soil.
“Whoever it was, it was a person or a group of people who carefully thought out the operation and carried it out in such a way that civilians, innocent people, would not suffer,” Oleksandr Ivanovich Kovalenko from the Ukrainian Center for Security Studies told the ABC.
“It is obvious that General Kirillov was under … highly professional surveillance, since the Russian special services were unable to detect it and prevent the liquidation of a high-ranking officer,” he said.
“Therefore, the organiser and the executor are not just people from the street, which suggests that the executors must have had the appropriate experience in conducting such operations.”
Mr Kovalenko said Ukraine has become increasingly efficient at taking out people it connects with war crimes against its people.
“In general, Ukrainian security forces do interact with the Russian underground. As is known, the Ukrainian defence forces include three units formed from ethnic Russians. Therefore, the possibility that Russian citizens who oppose Putin’s dictatorship could have been involved in this operation is very possible.”
He also suggested another possible theory — a hit authorised within Russia’s intelligence agencies.
“This could equally be an internal conflict between security forces, which have a bloody trail behind them, or a special operation of retaliation,” he said.
Ukrainian secret service rebuilt
While we might never know the true story as to who was behind this assassination, what is clear is Ukraine’s reach inside enemy territory.
“My opinion, even this operation widely spread in the media — behind such results are professionals,” former SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said.
The former spy chief turned Ukrainian politician has twice served at the helm of the SBU intelligence agency and helped rebuild the organisation over the past decade.
Flowers have been left at the site of the bomb blast which killed Igor Kirillov and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov. (AP Photo: Dmitry Serebryakov)
“We started from ground zero … to rebuild a new security service for Ukraine. We started with an absolutely new counter-intelligence department, and we made it the main department in the security service of Ukraine to protect the homeland,” Mr Nalyvaichenko told the ABC.
“It was absolutely clear for us that the main threat and danger was from Russia and Russian special services. FSB, GRU [Russian military intelligence service] and others.
“With international partners — Americans, Brits and others — we organised new training … the priority was counterintelligence,” he said.
While he wouldn’t speculate on who conducted the operation on behalf of the SBU, he said Ukraine’s intelligence agencies now rivalled Russia’s.
“Ukrainian special services are much smaller than Russian but are quite effective and now stronger in any kind of counter-intelligence operations.”
Ilya Ponomarev agreed.
“I think they are coming closer and closer to efficiency of Mossad of Israel,” Mr Ponomarev said.
“I know for many people it is a personal dream that after they win the war, they would start hunting for the war criminals and punish them as again, in the similar fashion as Israeli’s did after World War Two, when they were fighting worldwide for Nazis in the very similar way Ukrainians are dreaming about hunting Putin.”
The general’s killing is the most audacious operation so far and most probably had the intent of instilling fear among the Kremlin’s most senior army figures.
It’s clear that Ukraine has a deeper reach into Russia than before and while we likely we never know who was really behind this assassination, both countries are trying to win the propaganda war.
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