In December, Ukrainian intelligence claimed responsibility for the assassination of Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov by a bomb planted in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow.

Thus far, there has been no comment from Ukraine regarding today’s car-bomb killing of yet another senior Russian military officer outside of his apartment building in the Moscow suburb of Balashikha.

As in the earlier incident, today’s bombing was activated by remote control as Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik approached the vehicle. The bomb has been described by investigators as “a homemade explosive device filled with shrapnel.” [RFE/RL, April 25, 2025.]

Moskalik was a key figure involved in the Normandy Format negotiations on Ukraine in 2015 and 2019, and was included in the Russian delegation in 2018 talks with Syria. There has been no public statement as yet concerning his possible role in the current war in Ukraine. [Id.]

It is too early to tell whether anyone will step forward to claim “credit” for this latest killing, though it is likely that Russian authorities will blame Ukraine in any event.

But these incidents are eerily reminiscent of the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of close Putin ally Aleksandr Dugin, in August of 2022, which was thought to have been intended for her father.

And the plane crash that conveniently rid Putin of the troublesome Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023.

Not to mention the suspicious fates of two Russian colonels, reported to have fallen out of windows in the space of two days in February of this year (one died, the other survived). And they are just a small percentage of the total number of individuals — oligarchs, as well as military and other government officials — who have met suspicious ends in recent years . . . a number of whom are said to have “fallen” out of windows.

In the 25 years of Vladimir Putin’s reign, there have been far too many instances of major attacks — a theater hostage situation, a shopping center bombing, the Beslan school massacre, to name just three — that have been officially blamed on various factions, but are suspected of possibly having been instigated by the Russian government itself for purely political reasons.

The individual deaths may or may not be related to the mass murders. There may not be one simple answer; but surely they cannot all be written off as “accidents,” or blamed on outside forces, as the Russian government invariably does.

Unfortunately, we will probably never have all of the facts . . . just a growing list of the dead.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/25/25