Russian army general shot in Moscow as foreign minister blames Ukraine for "terrorist act"

A top Russian military intelligence general was shot in a Moscow apartment building Friday and hospitalized, the Kremlin said, depicting it as an assassination attempt orchestrated by Ukraine.

There was no comment from Kyiv, which has claimed responsibility for the killings of several high-ranking military officials since Moscow launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022.

Russian investigators said Vladimir Alekseyev -- the deputy head of Moscow's GRU military intelligence, sanctioned in the West for his alleged role in cyberattacks and charges that he organized a nerve agent attack on a Russian defector in Britain -- was shot by an "unidentified individual."

The investigators said the suspect fled the scene and the general was admitted to a hospital.

In televised comments, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind the "terrorist act" as it tries to "disrupt the negotiation process" searching for an end to the four-year war.

On Thursday, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff announced that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to exchange 314 prisoners during the second round of U.S.-mediated peace talks between the two countries in Abu Dhabi. 

The Kremlin said its secret services were investigating the incident and keeping President Vladimir Putin informed.

"The special services are doing their job," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"We wish the general a speedy recovery. We hope that will be the case," he added.

Russia's Investigative Committee said Friday Alekseyev had been hit by "several shots." There was no update on his condition other than that he had been hospitalized.

"Investigative actions and operational search measures are being carried out to identify the person or persons involved in committing the aforementioned crime," Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.

In a northwestern Moscow suburb, a forensic truck was parked outside an apartment block and investigators had cordoned off access, AFP reporters saw.

Skripal connection

A career military officer, Alekseyev has been the first deputy chief of the GRU since 2011.  

He has been under Western sanctions over alleged cyberattacks and for what the West said was his role in organizing the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the U.K. in 2018.

That attempted assassination left one member of the British public dead and severely strained ties between London and Moscow.

Alekseyev also led intelligence operations during the Russian intervention in Syria on behalf of now-ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

And amid the Ukraine war he was dispatched to negotiate with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin during his attempted mutiny against Russian military top brass in 2023.

At the time Alekseyev, was filmed sitting with Prigozhin in a Russian military compound taken over by Wagner, trying to persuade the mercenary chief to call off his troops.

Prigozhin died months after the aborted rebellion when his plane exploded in mid-air.

Previous targeted attacks

Since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, Russian authorities have blamed Kyiv for several assassinations of military officers and public figures in Russia. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of them. It has not yet commented on the shooting of Alekseyev.

In December, a car bomb killed Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff.

In April, another senior Russian military officer, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed in his car parked near his apartment building just outside Moscow.

A Russian man who previously lived in Ukraine pleaded guilty to carrying out the attack and said that he had been paid by Ukraine's security services.

Days after Moskalik's killing, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received a report from the head of Ukraine's foreign intelligence agency on the "liquidation" of top Russian military figures, adding that "justice inevitably comes," although he didn't mention Moskalik's name.

In December 2024, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. Kirillov's assistant also died. Ukraine's security service claimed responsibility for the attack.

Ukrainian military figures have also been targeted.  Last July, Ukraine's security agency said it tracked down and killed Russian agents suspected of shooting one of its senior officers to death in the Ukrainian capital.