MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. The Kiev regime has made dozens of attempts to assassinate Russian military and political figures who oppose it, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large, said on Tuesday.
According to him, these kinds of terrorist attacks were also registered on the territories of the Kherson Region, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR respectively). The terrorist attack that left Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov dead also appears to be a contract killing, he said.
"There have been about a dozen cases of unofficial executions, where certain sentences were handed down, and attempts were made to implement them through terrorist acts," Miroshnik continued. "Including on the territory of the Kherson Region, as well as in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics."
"All of this is banned under dozens of [international] conventions, including ones Ukraine is a signatory to," the diplomat noted.
Miroshnik added that the investigative authorities will give a full legal assessment of General Kirillov’s assassination, but at this point, it has all the hallmarks of a contract killing. Among the possible reasons for the general’s assassination, Miroshnik named Kirillov’s reports on the alleged use of chemical weapons by Ukraine, which reached "some circles that the Western countries deem as undesirable."
On the morning of December 17, an explosive device planted in a scooter exploded near the entrance of a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow, investigators revealed. Kirillov, 54, and his aide were killed in the blast. The Russian Investigative Committee has classified the explosion as a terrorist attack, Committee Spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko told TASS.