As head of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov – who was killed in an explosion in Moscow – was accused by the West of overseeing the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.
According to Russian officials, he and an aide were killed by explosives placed in an electric scooter, which was blown up as he left the building where he lived on Ryazansky Prospekt in southeastern Moscow.
Kirillov had become infamous for bizarre briefings at the Russian Defense Ministry, which prompted the British Foreign Office to label him a “key mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation.”
Much more than just a mouthpiece, he headed Russia’s Tymoshenko Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Academy before heading the Russian Army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces in 2017.
Britain’s Foreign Office said the force he commanded had deployed “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”, highlighting what the report said was the widespread use of riot control agents and “multiple reports of the use of the toxic asphyxiant chloropicrin “.
On the eve of his assassination, Ukraine’s SBU security service said he had been named in absentia in a criminal case for the “mass use” of banned chemical weapons on Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts.
The report noted “more than 4,800 cases of the enemy using chemical munitions” on Ukrainian territory since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
It said toxic substances had been used in drone attacks and combat grenades.
Kirillov earned his fame from the start of the war with a series of claims against both Ukraine and the West, none of which were based on fact.
One of his most outrageous claims was that the US had built biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used in an attempt to justify the large-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022.
In March 2022, he produced documents that he claimed had been seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on February 24 – which were amplified by pro-Kremlin media but rejected by independent experts.
Kirillov’s infamous allegations against Ukraine continued this year.
Last month he claimed that “one of the priority objectives” of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in Russia’s Kursk border area was the seizure of the Kursk nuclear power plant.
He presented a slideshow, supposedly based on a Ukrainian report, in which he claimed that in the event of an accident, only Russian territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination.
One of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine wanted to develop a “dirty bomb”.
Two years ago he claimed that “two organizations in Ukraine have specific instructions to create a so-called ‘dirty bomb’. This work is in its final stages”.
His claims were rejected by Western countries as “transparently false”.
But Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia suggested Kiev was preparing such a weapon, it meant only one thing: that Russia was already preparing it.
Kirillov revisited his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time regarding the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.
Kiev, he claimed, violated the international Chemical Weapons Convention with a variety of substances, with the help of Western countries, including the psychochemical warfare agent BZ, hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen chloride.
His death is seen by pro-Kremlin loyalists as a blow, but also as evidence of Ukraine’s ability to target prominent officials in Moscow.
The deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, called his death an “irreparable loss.”
