Igor Kirillov: notorious mouthpiece and the man behind Russia’s chemical weapons
As head of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological defense troops, Igor Kirillov – who has died in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of monitoring the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine .
Ukraine’s SBU security service said it was behind the explosion, which it described as a special operation against a legitimate target.
According to Russian authorities, Kirillov and a colleague were killed by explosives placed in an electric scooter, which was detonated as they were leaving the building they lived in on Ryazansky Prospekt in south-eastern Moscow .
He became notorious for giving strange briefings in the Russian Defense Ministry, leading the UK Foreign Office to label him a Russian Defense Ministry official. “Important mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”,
Before leading the Russian military’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops in 2017, Kirillov was more than just a mouthpiece, leading Russia’s Timoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Academy.
UK Foreign Office said The force he commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting the widespread use of riot control agents and “numerous reports of the use of the poisonous suffocating agent chloropicrin”.
On the eve of his assassination, Ukraine’s SBU announced that he had been named in absentia in a criminal case for “mass use” of banned chemical weapons on the eastern and southern fronts in Ukraine.
It cited “more than 4,800 cases of the enemy using chemical weapons” on Ukrainian territory since the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
It said that along with drone attacks, poisonous substances have also been used in combat grenades.
Kirillov earned his notoriety from the beginning of the war with a series of claims towards both Ukraine and the West, none of which were based on fact.
One of his most outrageous claims was America was building biological weapons laboratories in UkraineThis was used in an attempt to justify a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022.
He produced documents in March 2022 that he claimed were seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on 24 February – which were publicized by pro-Kremlin media but debunked by independent experts.
Kirillov’s notorious accusations against Ukraine continued this year.
Last month he claimed that the “primary objective” of Ukraine’s retaliatory strike in Russia’s Kursk border region was to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant.
He presented a slide show, reportedly based on a Ukrainian report, alleging that only Russian territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination in the event of an accident.
One of the themes repeatedly repeated by Kirillov was that Ukraine was looking to develop a “dirty bomb”.
Two years ago he alleged that “two organizations in Ukraine have special instructions to create so-called ‘dirty bombs’. This work is in its final stages.”
His claims were dismissed by Western countries as “transparently false”.
But Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia suggested Kiev was preparing that kind of weapon, it could only mean one thing – Russia is already preparing it. Was.
Kirillov returned to his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time alleging the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.
He claimed that Kiev, with the help of Western countries, was violating the international chemical weapons convention with a variety of substances, including the psychochemical warfare agent BZ as well as hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.
His death is being seen as a blow by pro-Kremlin loyalists, but also as evidence that Ukraine has the ability to target high-profile officials in Moscow.
Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the upper house of Russia’s parliament, called his death an “irreparable loss.”
