Senior Russian officer in hospital after being shot in Moscow

A deputy chief of Russian military intelligence was shot and wounded in Moscow on Friday in an attack that follows a series of assassinations of senior military officers that Russia blamed on Ukraine.

Lt.-Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several time by an unidentified assailant at an apartment building in Moscow’s northwest and hospitalized, Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.

Petrenko didn’t say who could be behind the attack on the 64-year-old who has served as the first deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, since 2011.

Alekseyev was decorated with the Hero of Russia medal for his role in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria. In June 2023, he was shown on state TV speaking to mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin when his Wagner Group seized the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don during his short-lived mutiny.

The shooting came a day after Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators wrapped up two days of talks in Abu Dhabi aimed at ending the nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine. The Russian delegation was led by the military intelligence chief, Adm. Igor Kostyukov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed about the attack, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who added that law enforcement agencies need to step up protection of senior military officers during the conflict in Ukraine.

Asked about the shooting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it would be up to law enforcement agencies to pursue the investigation but described it as an apparent “terrorist act” by Ukraine intended to derail peace talks.

Ukrainian authorities haven’t commented on the attack.

Previously sanctioned by Western governments

The business daily Kommersant said the attacker, posing as a delivery person, shot the general twice in the stairway of his apartment building, wounding him in the foot and the arm. Alekseyev tried to wrest away the gun and was shot again in the chest before the attacker fled, the report said.

Alekseyev, who was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, rose steadily through the ranks to lead operations of Russian military intelligence in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

He was sanctioned by Washington for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and also faced sanctions in the U.K. and the European Union over his alleged role in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England.

Since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, Russian authorities have blamed Kyiv for several assassinations of military officers and public figures in Russia. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of them. It has not yet commented on the shooting of Alekseyev.

In December, a car bomb killed Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff.

In April, another senior Russian military officer, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed in his car parked near his apartment building just outside Moscow. A suspected perpetrator was quickly arrested.

A Russian man who previously lived in Ukraine pleaded guilty to carrying out the attack and said he had been paid by Ukraine’s security services.

Days after Moskalik’s killing, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received a report from the head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence agency on the “liquidation” of top Russian military figures, adding that “justice inevitably comes” although he didn’t mention Moskalik’s name.

In December 2024, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. Kirillov’s assistant also died. Ukraine’s security service claimed responsibility for the attack.