General Kyrylov was a legitimate target of Ukraine, accusations of the Russian Federation are baseless – editorial article of The Guardian

This opinion is expressed in an editorial of The Guardian published on December 17.

“The Russian leadership is furious that one of their top commanders was killed by Ukrainian spies. However, their anger seems misplaced […] The Russian general appears to have been a legitimate target, and Ukraine most likely followed the laws of armed conflict, which stipulate that the use of force must be necessary, proportionate and limited to military personnel, without civilian casualties,” the publication said.

According to The Guardian, the murder showed “unexpectedly formidable” capabilities of the Ukrainian special service – the SBU. The newspaper also writes that Kyiv’s targeted operations are aimed at eliminating similar Russian targets “reveal the degree of reach of Ukrainian special services [до об’єктів атак]challenging the Kremlin’s war machine while upholding the laws of war.”

As noted by the publication, General Kyrylov and his assistant became the most high-ranking figures killed since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

They both died as a result of a remote detonation of a bomb hidden in a parked scooter near one of the Moscow residential buildings.

And literally the day before, the SBU charged General Ihor Kyrylov in absentia with “mass use of prohibited chemical weapons.”

According to official Kyiv data, more than 2,000 servicemen were hospitalized due to the use of chemical substances by the Russians, and three died.

A little earlier, in October 2024, the British authorities introduced sanctions against General Kyrylov, accusing him of overseeing the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine and that he served “an important mouthpiece of Kremlin disinformation.”

“These deadly operations have their own grim calculation that reflects the brutal logic of war. For Ukraine, goals are cogs in the mechanism of destruction that destroys its cities and towns. For Russia, the killings are consistently classified as terrorism, a line Moscow often uses to deflect attention from its own conduct in the conflict. However, there is a clear difference — while Russia remains the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim of this aggression,” concluded The Guardian.

The liquidation of the Russian general Kirillov — what is known

On December 17, the Investigative Committee of Russia confirmed the fact of the death in Moscow of Lieutenant General Igor Kyrylov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection forces of the Russian Armed Forces, and his assistant as a result of an explosion.

NV sources in the special services said that the blow up of the general was a special operation of the SBU. According to the interlocutors, the explosives were attached to the scooter, which was standing near the entrance of the house on Ryazansky prospect in Moscow.

The day before, on December 16, the Security Service of Ukraine announced in absentia that it suspected Kyrylov, who is responsible for the mass use of prohibited chemical weapons by the occupiers against the Defense Forces in the east and south of Ukraine.

According to the investigation, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 4.8 thousand cases of Russia’s use of chemical weapons at the front.

On December 18, Russian propaganda media announced the alleged detention of two people who may be involved in the liquidation.

Moreover, one of the detainees is a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, who allegedly “recruited by the Ukrainian special services”, and he carried out the detonation for a “reward” of $100,000. Later, the FSB published a video of him “interrogation”.