Live Updates: Russian General Igor Kirillov, accused by Ukraine, killed in explosion in Moscow

The explosion that killed Igor Kirillov on Tuesday appears to have been the most ambitious targeted attack of the war so far on Russian soil, carried out by the Ukrainian security services (as a source familiar with the operation claimed) and not just the people hit core of the Russian military, but close to the heart of the country’s capital.

An exploding scooter that takes out a high-ranking general is certainly not a good look for Russia’s upgraded internal security apparatus. But it is also a measure of the urgency Ukraine feels in regaining the initiative in this war by any means possible, as the clock ticks down to Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Russia continues its steady advance Eastern Front.

Ukraine and its allies believed that Kirillov, as head of Russia’s radiation, biological and chemical protection forces, played a particularly destructive role in the conflict and was responsible for the widespread use of chemical substances and warfare agents such as CS gas Battlefield. He was also an expert in the use of disinformation, an essential tool for maintaining support for war at home. In one of his last public appearances in November, he claimed that Ukraine’s main goal in invading Russia’s Kursk region was to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, reinforcing a two-year-old Russian conspiracy theory that Ukraine was planning to build a dirty bomb.

A feature of this war was assassination attempts on Russian soil against key military figures who were directly or indirectly linked to Ukraine. In July last year, a former submarine commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was shot dead while escaping in the southern city of Krasnodar. And yet Kirillov’s death is the fourth incident in the last two months alone.

In October, Dmitry Golenkov, a pilot with Russia’s 52nd Heavy Bomber Regiment, was stabbed to death with a hammer in Russia’s Bryansk region. In mid-November, a source in the Ukrainian security service told CNN that it was responsible for a car bomb in Sevastopol, Crimea, that killed the chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet’s missile ships. And less than a week ago, the deputy chief designer of Russia’s Mars Design Bureau was shot dead in a Moscow park. CNN’s Ukrainian security source confirmed that Kiev was behind his killing and said he was responsible for modernizing some cruise missiles fired at Ukraine.

Like all Russian Defense Ministry employees, Kirillov is replaceable, and it is unlikely that his death will cause Russia to suddenly change its course on chemical weapons. And yet, as with many of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian soil, there is an information component here – a signal to the Russian military that individuals are vulnerable wherever they are, and to the Russian people – the latest attempt to up the façade break through that everything is in progress plan.