Russian officials indicate that one of the suspects in the murder of a high-ranking intelligence officer of the military is arrested in a foreign country and handed over to Russia, as the investigation into what authorities term as an attempted assassination is ongoing concerning the war in Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, the First deputy chief of the Russian military intelligence (GRU) was critically injured when he was shot several times on Friday at an apartment block in northwest Moscow. According to the investigators, the 64-year-old officer was hospitalized and had to undergo surgery after the attack.
On Sunday, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia stated that one of its citizens (named Lyubomir Korba) was arrested in Dubai, over the shooting. Korba was arrested by the authorities in the United Arab Emirates and then handed down to Russia, as per the agency. The FSB accused Korba of performing the attack following the directive of Ukrainian intelligence services.
The FSB announced on its Web site that it had also determined two suspected accomplices. One of them was arrested in Moscow, and another one was reported to have escaped to Ukraine. Russian investigators claimed that Korba had entered Moscow in December with that mission of executing what they termed as a terror act.
According to the Investigative Committee of Russia, an attempted murder case was already open. According to the investigators, an unknown shooter shot Alekseyev a few times and walked away. According to the reports of the Russian news agents, several suspects will be questioned and charged.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, termed the shooting as there being a supposed terrorist attack on diplomatic processes to cease the conflict in Ukraine. He claimed that the investigation would be done by the law enforcement agencies but indicated that timing of the attack was important. Kyiv has refuted any association to the shooting and denied the allegations by Moscow.
The accident took place a day after the negotiation team of Russia, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators ended two days of negotiations in the capital of United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi. The talks were directed at establishing a way of bringing about the war in Ukraine, which had lasted almost four years to an end. The representatives of Russia to the negotiations were the head of the GRU and the immediate superior of Alekseyev, Admiral Igor Kostyukov.
Alekseyev has been the first deputy chief of Russian military intelligence service since 2011 and was one of the key participants of multiple key Russian military and intelligence operations. The Hero of Russia was a medal awarded to him as a result of his participation in the military battle in Moscow in Syria. He is also subject to U.S. and European Union sanctions because of Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential elections of 2016 and the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in the United Kingdom, in 2018.
In June 2023, Alekseyev was interviewed in Russian state television with the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin as Wagner Group briefly rebelled by occupying military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then withdrawing.
The attempt to shoot down Alekseyev is the most recent occurrence of attacks against high ranking Russian military officers. These claims are based on numerous assassinations and assassination attempts within Russia which the Russian authorities claim are the work of Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 began. Ukrainian officials have taken ownership of certain operations but have refuted others.
In the last year, some of the top Russian officials have been assassinated in Moscow and its environs. Later on, in December, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, chief of Operational Training Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces was killed by a car bomb. In April, a bomb planted in the car of Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, who is a deputy head of the main operations section of the General Staff, exploded killing him outside his apartment building. The Russian officials indicated that one of the suspects had later on admitted and asserted that he had been bribed by the security agencies of Ukraine.
Several days later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned after the murder of Moskalik that he was informed of the killing of senior Russian military officials, stating that justice would be served, but not mentioning particular names.
In December 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the leader of the nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb planted on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. His assistant too died in the blast. The security service of Ukraine took responsibility of that attack.
In the meantime, the combat in Ukraine was ongoing during the weekend. Russian airstrike on residential territory of the eastern city Kramatorsk resulted in the death of one person and two others were injured, Ukrainian officials said. The fire in a nine-storey apartment block was a result of the strike, as reported by Ukraine State Emergency Service.
The head of Ukraine state-owned gas company, Naftogaz, also reported that Russia also overnight struck energy infrastructure in the Poltava region. The Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of targeting the power and heating systems several times throughout the winter months during an attempt to demoralize the civilians, which they term as weaponizing winter.
President Zelenskyy stated that the United States offered a deadline to both Ukraine and Russia until June to sign a peace agreement. He reported that Washington is ready to bring pressure to both parties in case no improvement is made within this time period and that U.S officials would like a definite date on when the war can end.