Russian general killed in Moscow car bombing
December 22, 2025
A Russian general was killed in a car bombing in southern Moscow on Monday, Russia's federal investigators said.
Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff, died from his injuries.
"Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of inquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services," Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for Russia's Investigative Committee, said.
Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin was "immediately" informed about Sarvarov's murder.
Ukraine accused in string of high-profile attacks
Since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv has been blamed for similar attacks.
General Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed in a car blast near Moscow in April.
Ukraine's security service was reportedly responsible for a December 2024 attack that killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces. He and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, died when a bomb hidden on an electric scooter exploded outside Kirillov's apartment.
At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin characterized Kirillov's death as a "grave error" by the country’s security agencies from which they had to learn and improve their effectiveness.
Russian military blogger Maxim Fomin was killed by an exploding statuette in a St. Petersburg cafe in April 2023. In August 2022, a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic