Three killed in Moscow bombing
Officers blown up as they approached ‘suspicious individual’ close to site of Russian general’s assassination earlier this week
The blast occurred after two traffic officers approached a ‘suspicious individual’ on Wednesday morning Credit: AP
Three people have died in an explosion in Moscow close to the site where a senior Russian general was killed by a car bomb two days ago.
The blast occurred after two traffic officers approached a “suspicious individual” near a police car on Yeletskaya Street in southern Moscow in the early hours of Wednesday.
The man detonated a bomb when they attempted to detain him, Russia’s investigative committee said.
The attack took place 300 metres from the car park where Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the Russian General Staff’s operational training directorate, was blown up in his vehicle on Monday, according to independent Russian outlet Agentstvo.
Several officers from Moscow’s military intelligence agency (GRU) are thought to live in a residential complex in the area, around 10 miles from the Kremlin, according to earlier reports.
Both traffic police officers, named as Ilya Klimanov, 24, and Maxim Gorbunov, 25, were killed in the explosion. An unnamed third person, 37, “who was next to the policemen” also died.
The officers were childhood friends from the same village, a Moscow-based newspaper said.
Several Russian Telegram channels reported that the third person killed was the bomber, but this has not been independently verified.
A further two people were seriously injured and taken to hospital, according to reports.
Russia’s investigative committee opened criminal cases following the blast under clauses that deal with the murder of law enforcement officers and the illegal trafficking of bombs.
Investigators said they had not yet determined a motive for the attack, but Andrei Kolesnik, a member of the Duma’s defence committee, appeared to blame Ukraine.
“Ukraine has declared a terrorist war against us... I feel sorry for the guys. Condolences to their families. But unfortunately Ukraine, with help from its Western partners, is still trying to intimidate us,” he said in remarks quoted by news site Lenta.ru.
Witnesses reported seeing a hooded man wearing a mask and looking into parked cars on the residential street shortly before the detonation.
A second, unexploded improvised explosive device (IED) was found near the site of the attack, according to Telegram channels, but these reports have also not been verified.
Residents told state media that the explosion was so powerful that an entire building nearby shook.
“I heard a very loud sound at 1.29am identical to the one at 6.55am on Monday, when a car was blown up,” Maria, a resident, told Gazeta.ru.
Earlier this week, Russian investigators said they were investigating the possibility that the bomb that killed Gen Sarvarov on Monday was planted by Ukrainian special forces.
However, Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Myrotvorets, an unofficial Kyiv-based website that publishes information on so-called “enemies of Ukraine”, updated its entry on Sarvarov to say that the general had been “liquidated”.
A source in Kyiv’s military intelligence told Ukrainian media that a “local resident” had carried out the latest attack “in protest against the Kremlin’s aggressive policy”.
The source claimed that the Russian police officers were former servicemen who had been involved in torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war. They did not provide any evidence, and did not deny involvement in orchestrating the blast.
Sarvarov’s death was the latest in a string of assassinations of military figures and high-profile supporters of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, often taking place right on the Kremlin’s doorstep.
Kyiv has said its intelligence operations on Russian soil focus on individuals involved in war crimes, describing them as “legitimate” targets.
In December 2024, Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who Kyiv had accused of ordering chemical weapons to be used against its troops on the front line, was killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment block.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, condemned the “major blunder” of security services that failed to prevent the attack at the time.
Days before Kirillov’s death, Mikhail Shatsky, an engineer involved in modernising missiles launched on Ukraine, was gunned down in a Moscow park around eight miles from the Kremlin.
In April, a car bomb killed Lt Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, the deputy head of the main operations directorate of Russia’s General Staff, in a suburb east of Moscow.