
As head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Organic Defence troops, Igor Kirillov – who has died in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of overseeing the usage of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s SBU safety service stated it was behind the blast which it described as a particular operation towards a reputable goal.
Kirillov and an aide have been killed by explosives planted in an electrical scooter, in accordance with Russian officers, which was blown up as he left the constructing he lived in on Ryazansky Prospekt in south-eastern Moscow.
He had grow to be infamous for outlandish briefings on the Russian defence ministry which prompted the UK Overseas Workplace to label him as a “important mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.
Kirillov was way over only a mouthpiece, heading Russia’s Timoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Organic Safety Academy, earlier than occurring to guide the Russian military’s Radiation, Chemical and Organic Safety Troops in 2017.
The UK Overseas Workplace stated that the drive he commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what it stated was the widespread use of riot management brokers and “a number of stories of the usage of the poisonous choking agent chloropicrin”.
On the eve of his killing, Ukraine’s SBU declared that he had been named in absentia in a prison case for the “mass use” of prohibited chemical weapons on the japanese and southern fronts in Ukraine.
It cited “greater than 4,800 instances of the enemy utilizing chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory because the begin of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
It stated poisonous substances had been utilized in drone assaults in addition to in fight grenades.
Kirillov earned his notoriety from the beginning of the battle with a collection of claims directed in direction of each Ukraine and the West, none of which have been based mostly on truth.
Amongst his most outrageous claims was one which the US had been constructing organic weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was utilized in an try and justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.
He produced paperwork in March 2022 which he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on 24 February – which have been amplified by pro-Kremlin media however rubbished by impartial specialists.
Kirillov’s infamous allegations towards Ukraine continued into this yr.
Final month he claimed that “one of many precedence goals” of Ukraine’s counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk border area was to grab the Kursk nuclear energy plant.
He introduced a slideshow, purportedly based mostly on a Ukrainian report, alleging that within the occasion of an accident solely Russia territory can be uncovered to radioactive contamination.
One in every of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine was looking for to develop a “soiled bomb”.
Two years in the past he alleged that “two organisations in Ukraine have particular directions to create a so-called ‘soiled bomb’. This work is in its closing stage”.
His claims have been rejected by Western nations as “transparently false”.
However Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia urged Kyiv was getting ready that form of weapon, it meant just one factor – that Russia was already getting ready it.
Kirillov returned to his soiled bomb claims final summer time, this time alleging the invention of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a metropolis in japanese Ukraine that the Russians captured final February.
Kyiv, he claimed, was violating the worldwide Chemical Weapons Conference with a wide range of substances with the help of Western nations, together with the psychochemical warfare agent BZ in addition to hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.
His dying is being seen by pro-Kremlin loyalists as a blow, but additionally as proof that Ukraine has the power to focus on high-profile officers in Moscow.
The deputy speaker of Russia’s higher home of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, stated his dying as an “irreparable loss”.