Deputy chief of Russian military intelligence shot and wounded in Moscow

A deputy chief of Russian military intelligence was shot and wounded in Moscow on Friday in an attack that follows a series of assassinations of senior military officers that Russia has blamed on Ukraine. Lieutenant General  Vladimir Alekseyev, 64 was shot several times by an unidentified assailant at an apartment building in Moscow’s northwest and hospitalised, Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. Petrenko didn’t say who could be behind the attack on Alekseyev, who has served as the first deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence since 2011.

He was decorated with the Hero of Russia medal for his role in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria and in June 2023 was filmed speaking to mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin when his Wagner Group seized the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don during his botched mutiny. The shooting came a day after Russian, Ukrainian and US negotiators wrapped up two days of talks in Abu Dhabi aimed at ending the nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine.

The Russian delegation was led by the military intelligence chief, Admiral Igor Kostyukov. President Vladimir Putin was informed about the attack, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who added that law enforcement agencies need to step up protection of senior military officers during the conflict in Ukraine. 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 Lieutenant General  Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff. In April, another senior Russian military officer, Lt.  Lieutenant General   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 suspected perpetrator was quickly arrested.

Days after Moskalik’s killing, Ukraine’s 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, Lieutenant General 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.