Russian general assassinated by Ukraine: is Putin at risk?
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Stibble and James Hansen. One of Russia's top generals has been killed in an explosion in Moscow. The general in question is Igor Kirillov.

He was the head of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops and was alleged to have ordered almost 5,000 chemical attacks on Ukrainian soldiers. A source in Ukraine's SBU security service told Reuters that its agents had carried out the assassination, saying Kyiv believed him to be a war criminal and a legitimate target.

Here's what we know so far. Just after 6am this morning, with the temperature in Moscow below zero, he left his apartment block. He was being picked up by his assistant at the Sreda housing complex when a bomb, which had been strapped to a kick scooter left nearby, exploded. According to a Russian newspaper, the bomb had been taped to the scooter's handlebars and was activated by a radio signal or a call from a mobile phone. It contained up to 300 grams of TNT equivalent TNT.

and images from the scene showed two bodies lying in blood-stained snow.

Kirillov is the most senior Russian official to have been assassinated since the war in Ukraine began. And Russian state media has quoted a Kremlin official as saying Ukraine will face imminent revenge. Our guest today is Hamish de Breton-Gordon, who was the commanding officer at the UK's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment. Hamish, first of all, tell us a bit more about General Kirillov. Why was he a prime target for Ukraine?

Well, General Kurov is a very interesting character. In effect, he did the same job for Russia that I used to do for NATO in the UK, although my focus was very much on defensive, whereas Russia sees particularly chemical weapons as an offensive weapon. But Kurov first came to prominence in the West when he was appointed to this position. He's a three-star general, lieutenant general, so very, very senior, in 2017.

We then had the Novichok attack in Salisbury in March 2018, where I'm talking to you from now. Now, that Novichok would have been authorized by Karelov. So he would have had his DNA all over it. And the Russian GRU agents who conducted that failed assassination of Sergei Skripal would have been trained by his forces. He then reappeared in Syria.

And we've discussed before the extensive use of Syrian chemical weapons, once again to the fall with the fall of Assad. But the important thing about Kirillov, along with a general called Serovkin, who people might remember was the leading Russian general in Syria and then became the boss in Ukraine.

The two of them developed what I term the Russian handbook of attacking civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, power networks. They sort of honed that in Syria and then repeated it in Ukraine. He's also...

a very prominent spokesman for Putin. And this is why it's so extraordinary. This is Putin's, almost his favorite general, his right-hand man. After the Salisbury poisoning, Korolyov was in Russian media saying that this was all the work of the British MI6 and other people. And recently, he's been saying that Ukraine's building a dirty bomb and intends to use that.

So he is absolutely a key part of the main cogs in the Kremlin. So to have him assassinated literally in spitting distance of the Kremlin is bizarre. And we know that it is, you know, the reverberations around Moscow at the moment are phenomenal. And on the back of Putin's failure in Syria, I should think that the walls of the Kremlin are really shaking. And this probably has got Putin very rattled. Yeah.

Let's talk about the circumstances, if we may now, of this assassination. It sounds almost like something out of a Cold War spy thriller. How long will this have been in the planning?

Well, as you say, this is more sort of James Bond than what we conceive to be reality at the moment. It does sort of hop back to the sort of Cold War days where the old KGB were operating in the West, taking people out. The CIA and MI6 were conducting operations behind Russian lines. So this is the sort of stuff that...

we sort of thought was confined to the Cold War. But obviously, in a direct war between Russia and Ukraine, one would expect espionage and Secret Service operations to take place. I mean, this is very complex. This sort of thing takes weeks, if not months to plan, to get explosives into a scooter, as we understand it, and time that explosion to go off

when the general and his aide were on it all very close by. So incredibly complex operation. And one assumes at the moment that these people have got away with it and fled. But within the, I say within spitting distance of the Kremlin, you know, these people...

like RUF would live in government departments. They would have very tight security from the FSB, maybe the GRU as well, the Russian Secret Service. There would be what we call a ring of steel around the Kremlin, and it would be layered. So, you know, one can imagine if you go to the Kremlin, you'll be going through, you know, sort of gates and passes and electronic, all the rest of it. But as you move out from it, they will all have lots of surveillance devices,

cameras, remote control cameras, sensors. And we understand this is within a few miles of the Kremlin. So it should be well within that coverage. So it is extraordinary that the SBU have managed to conduct this operation that would have taken so long to put together and execute it. It would seem near perfect and they've got away. So an extraordinary piece of espionage.

And Hamish, surely if Ukraine has the power to assassinate General Kirillov, it raises the question, could Vladimir Putin be next? Well,

Well, I would expect that Putin is sat in his lair at the moment, James, asking exactly the same question of himself and also his protection detail. He can't sort of look outside for help. You know, if something like this happened, say, in London, you know, the British Secret Service would be working with the Americans, you know, our European allies and everybody else involved.

to try and make sure or create a much deeper ring. But the Russians got nobody. I mean, you know, their friends seem to be the North Koreans and the Iranians. The Iranians are absolutely hammered at the moment after their terrorist proxies have all been sort of severely downgraded in the Middle East. You know, North Korea, I don't think anybody's terribly concerned about their secret service capabilities. So, yeah, I would have thought Putin is feeling pretty isolated at the moment.

And no doubt there will be whoever's responsible for this, as in responsible for the security of Kirov and Putin, I expect they'll be heading to the Urals and the Gulags there pretty rapidly, if they're still alive. The Kremlin has already vowed revenge, as we mentioned. What form do you think that might take? Well, if the Kremlin had not said this,

One would be very surprised. Of course, they're going to say it. It's difficult to see. I mean, they will fire more missiles, no doubt, at schools and hospitals, you know, all the pathetic targets that Russia aims at. You know, they will no doubt throw more North Koreans into the meat grinder of Kursk.

But apart from that, you know, I'm struggling to see. They might well try themselves to assassinate Ukrainian generals in Kiev or elsewhere. But, you know, it's fairly common knowledge. They tried certainly in the early days to get Zelensky. But, you know, they're rather better protection around Zelensky, I would have thought, than Putin. So, yeah, one expects them to do something. But anything better than they've done in the last sort of thousand plus days, I would be surprised.

Hamish, once again I suppose this has drawn the world's attention to Russia's illegal use of chemical weapons in war.

What more can Ukraine's allies do to help it deal with the Russian chemical threat? Well, that's a very good question, James. I think, first of all, this is a big wake-up call for the UK and NATO that we look at what we call CBIRN defence, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence. The Russians look at it as a fence. They look at it as a fence of weapon.

And when it comes to Ukraine, the thing that I find devastatingly frustrating is the fact that if the Russians are using chloropicrin, which is just a riot control agent, there's a very simple way to make it ineffective by making sure that soldiers have respirators, gas masks, if you like.

And unfortunately, at the moment, they have very few. And the ones that they do have are old Russian ones. And it's probably counterintuitive. The molecule in chloropicrin is quite a complex molecule. You need a really good filter on your gas mask to filter it out. And the Russian ones don't do it. So

What they need is really good sort of gas masks. And certainly, you know, with others, we are trying to sort of crowdfund and get as many as we can to the front line. So there is an easy solution there. So there's a solution and problem that Ukraine has. But there's a wider issue for NATO and the UK that we need to recognize absolutely that this is a threat we need to mitigate as Russia is still the adversary that we are most likely to have to fight in the next few years.

Hamish, thank you. That's the chemical weapons expert and former British Army officer, Hamish de Bretten-Gordon. That is it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow. We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.

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