MOSCOW:
A car bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow on Monday morning as officials reported “slow progress” in talks with the United States on how to end the war in Ukraine.
Top negotiators from both Russia and Ukraine were in Miami over the weekend for separate meetings with US officials seeking to break the deadlock on a deal to end almost four years of fighting, triggered by Moscow’s all-out offensive on its neighbour in 2022.
Kyiv has not commented on the blast, the latest in a string of similar incidents, but Russian investigators said they suspected it was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces”.
The attack had the hallmarks of other assassinations of generals and pro-war figures that have either been claimed or are widely believed to have been orchestrated by Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head of the Russian General Staff’s training department, was killed when the bomb, which had been placed under his parked car, detonated in a residential quarter of southern Moscow.
AFP reporters at the scene saw a mangled white Kia SUV, its doors and back window blown out. The frame was twisted and charred from the blast.
The scene had been cordoned off by security forces, and investigators were sifting through the debris. Eyewitnesses reported a loud bang.
“We absolutely didn’t expect it. We thought we were safe, and then this happens right next to us,” local resident, Tatiana, 74, told AFP.
“The windows rattled, you could tell it was an explosion,” said Grigory, 70, who also declined to give his surname.
“We need to treat it more calmly. It’s the cost of war,” he added.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it was “working through various lines of enquiry into the murder. One of them involves the possible organisation of the crime by Ukrainian special services.”
Sarvarov fought in the Russian army’s campaigns in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya in the 1990s, according to his official biography on the defence ministry’s website.
He had also been one of the figures overseeing Russian forces in Syria in 2015-16.
