Russian investigators are considering a link to Ukrainian military intelligence after a top Kremlin general was killed by a car bomb in Moscow on Monday morning.
Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, former commander of Russian forces in Syria and the head of operational training for the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, died in an explosion as he drove his car, a Kia Sorento, out of the car park of a residential bloc in Moscow on Monday morning. The visibly bloodied wreckage, which the Kremlin has said was destroyed by an explosive device under the vehicle, is being examined by investigators for forensic clues.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was “immediately” made aware of the death of Lieutenant General Sarvarov.
An investigation has been launched over the crimes of “murder committed in a socially dangerous manner” and the trafficking of explosives. Russia says its agencies are considering the hypothesis of an assassination “orchestrated” by Ukraine’s intelligence agencies. While Kyiv has not commented at the time of publication, its military intelligence directorate has executed, and claimed credit for, several assassinations against both Russians and Ukrainian-citizen “traitors” over the course of its war of defence so far, with car bombs a recurring feature.
The blast took place around 0700 on Monday morning, and Lieutenant General Sarvarov was killed at the scene. He becomes one of the most senior Russian officers killed, presumably, in the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to Russian state media, the General had been awarded orders during his service in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine, including the Order of Courage, the Suvorov Medal, and the Order of Merit to the Fatherland, first and second class.
Russia also noted on Monday morning that Lieutenant General Sarvarov’s name and biography appeared on the Ukrainian ‘Peacemaker’ [Myrotvorets Center] website, a list of “traitors, militants, mercenaries, terrorists, Russian war criminals” for the benefit of “the Security Service of Ukraine”. A record apparently created in 2022 lists Sarvarov as a “Russian war criminal… Participant in the military attack of fascist Russia on Ukraine… Involved in the genocide of the Ukrainian people”. An update notes he has now been “liquidated”.
Ukraine has long been pursuing a campaign of such “liquidations” against both the Russian and those of its own people it considers to have betrayed Kyiv, including residents of Russian-occupied areas who have collaborated with Moscow. As previously reported, senior officer General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in April, Major General Mikhail Evgenievich Gudkov was killed by a missile strike in July, and Igor Kirillov was killed by an IED outside his apartment last December.
Also, last December, Ukraine claimed the “liquidation” of a Russian missile scientist in Moscow by shooting, and the assassination by car bomb of a Ukrainian citizen, the prison governor in an occupied zone, who was accused of war crimes. As reported at the time:
These assassinations are just the latest in a line of such “liquidations” by the Ukrainian state taking out what it calls traitors and collaborators. Last month, a senior naval officer accused of war crimes was assassinated in Sevastopol, Crimea, also taken out with a car bomb. Russia confirmed the killing, calling it a terrorist attack. As noted at the time: “Russian media reported that the explosion tore off Trankovsky’s legs and he died from blood loss”.
In October, a high-ranking Russian officer involved in the special operations forces was assassinated just days after returning to Moscow from the Ukraine front lines. Nikita Klenkov was shot through his car window by a lurking gunman who was able to escape.
Just days before that, the head of security at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was another victim to a Ukrainian car bomb. Kyiv claimed the assassination, calling Andriy Korotkyy a war criminal who had been “involved in the organization and execution of war crimes and repression of Ukrainians under occupation”, making the slaying justified “retribution”.
In April, a Moscow-loyal Ukrainian official “collaborator” in occupied Luhansk who ran the state education agency was killed by a car bomb. He was accused of allowing Russian propaganda into children’s classrooms.
Formerly reasonably mainstream pre-war Ukrainian politicians have been the subject of liquidations too. In December 2023, Ilya Kiva — who had been a member of Parliament in the Ukrainian Rada until the wartime purge of dissenting lawmakers under martial law — was shot in the head. The Ukrainian intelligence services called him a “top traitor, collaborator and propagandist… criminal” and claimed the assassination.
The month before in November 2023 Ukraine also claimed the killing of Mikhail Filiponenko of occupied Luhansk, also a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker. Ukrainian intelligence said: “He was involved in the organization of torture camps in the occupied territories of the Luhansk region, where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were subjected to inhumane torture. Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people” and said he was blown up in a car bomb by partisans.
In some cases, the means of collecting intelligence on assassination targets by Ukrainian spies is very characteristically modern. When Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky was shot dead while jogging in Krasnodar it is stated he may have been tracked by GPS fitness app Strava.
