Senior Russian officer shot in Moscow in apparent assassination attempt

An unidentified individual has shot Lieutenant General Alekseyev in the Russian capital before fleeing the scene, authorities say.

A senior Russian military official has been hospitalised after being shot several times in Moscow, according to state media quoting Russian officials.

An unknown assailant carried out a gun attack on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy chief of Russian military intelligence, in a residential building, Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee (ICR), said on Friday.

Alekseyev is deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff at the Defence Ministry.

Petrenko told reporters that a criminal investigation has been opened for attempted murder, and illegal trafficking in firearms regarding the incident, according to the Interfax news agency.

She said that the shooting attack took place in a building at Volokolamsk Highway in Moscow and the suspect fled the scene.

“The victim was hospitalised in one of the city hospitals,” Petrenko said, adding that investigators and forensic experts are currently working at the scene of the incident, reviewing CCTV footage, and questioning witnesses.

Alekseyev was one of the officials sent to negotiate with the late leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a rebellion against Moscow in 2023 and the was killed in a plane crash which many observers blamed on President Vladimir Putin.

Series of assassinations

Several senior Russian officers have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine four years ago, with Moscow blaming the attacks on Kyiv.

In some cases, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility.

The most recent officer to be killed was the head of the General Staff’s army training directorate, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, who was killed by a bomb under his car on December 22.

Last month a Russian court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison for the 2024 killing of the head of the Russian army’s radiological, chemical and biological defence forces.

The general, Igor Kirillov, was killed when a booby-trapped scooter exploded as he left an apartment block in Moscow, in an attack Kyiv said it had orchestrated.