As head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Organic Defence troops, Igor Kirillov – who has died in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of overseeing the usage of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.
He and an aide had been killed by explosives planted in an electrical scooter, in line with Russian officers, which was blown up as he left the constructing he lived in on Ryazansky Prospekt in south-eastern Moscow.
Kirillov had grow to be infamous for outlandish briefings on the Russian defence ministry which prompted the UK Overseas Workplace to label him as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.
He was excess of only a mouthpiece, heading Russia’s Timoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Organic Safety Academy, earlier than occurring to guide the Russian military’s Radiation, Chemical and Organic Safety Troops in 2017.
The UK Foreign Office said that the power he commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what it mentioned was the widespread use of riot management brokers and “a number of stories of the usage of the poisonous choking agent chloropicrin”.
On the eve of his killing, Ukraine’s SBU safety service declared that he had been named in absentia in a prison case for the “mass use” of prohibited chemical weapons on the jap and southern fronts in Ukraine.
It cited “greater than 4,800 circumstances of the enemy utilizing chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory because the begin of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
It mentioned poisonous substances had been utilized in drone assaults in addition to in fight grenades.
Kirillov earned his notoriety from the beginning of the struggle with a collection of claims directed in direction of each Ukraine and the West, none of which had been primarily based on reality.
Amongst his most outrageous claims was one which the US had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was utilized in an try to justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.
He produced paperwork in March 2022 which he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on 24 February – which had been amplified by pro-Kremlin media however rubbished by impartial specialists.
Kirillov’s infamous allegations in opposition to Ukraine continued into this 12 months.
Final month he claimed that “one of many precedence goals” of Ukraine’s counter-offensive into Russia’s Kursk border area was to grab the Kursk nuclear energy plant.
He introduced a slideshow, purportedly primarily based on a Ukrainian report, alleging that within the occasion of an accident solely Russia territory can be uncovered to radioactive contamination.
One in every of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine was searching for to develop a “soiled bomb”.
Two years in the past he alleged that “two organisations in Ukraine have particular directions to create a so-called ‘soiled bomb’. This work is in its last stage”.
His claims had been rejected by Western nations as “transparently false”.
However Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia recommended Kyiv was making ready that form of weapon, it meant just one factor – that Russia was already making ready it.
Kirillov returned to his soiled bomb claims final summer time, this time alleging the invention of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a metropolis in jap Ukraine that the Russians captured final February.
Kyiv, he claimed, was violating the worldwide Chemical Weapons Conference with a wide range of substances with the help of Western nations, together with the psychochemical warfare agent BZ in addition to hydrocyanic acid and cyanogen chloride.
His loss of life is being seen by pro-Kremlin loyalists as a blow, but in addition as proof that Ukraine has the flexibility to focus on high-profile officers in Moscow.
The deputy speaker of Russia’s higher home of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, mentioned his loss of life as an “irreparable loss”.
