Russian general shot in Moscow, attempted murder case

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News Desk: A senior Russian military general has been shot in Moscow. On Friday morning (6 February), Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev was shot in a residential building in the northwest outskirts of the capital and was immediately taken to a hospital.

No confirmed updates on his current condition have been released. Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee, stated that a criminal case has been filed, treating the incident as an attempted murder. She added, “The victim has been admitted to a city hospital.”

Lieutenant General Alexeyev is a top official in the Main Directorate of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. He is the latest high-ranking military officer in Moscow to be targeted since the full-scale war in Ukraine began.

Alexeyev had previously been sanctioned by the European Union after allegations of GRU involvement in the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury, UK.

He has played a key role during the war in Ukraine. In 2022, he participated in negotiations during the siege of Mariupol. In June 2023, he was also sent for talks during the short-lived mutiny led by Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin.

It is not yet known who is behind the attack at the residential building on the Volokolamsk Highway in Moscow. In the past, several attacks targeting Russian military officials were claimed by Ukraine.

At the end of last month, Russian intelligence agencies claimed to have thwarted an attempted attack on a Russian soldier in Saint Petersburg. Additionally, a January sentencing of an Uzbek citizen was handed down for the 2024 killing of General Igor Kirillov in an explosion outside a Moscow residential building. That attack was claimed by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency. General Kirillov was the head of Russia’s nuclear, biological, and chemical protection forces.