Russian general killed by car bomb in Moscow

A Russian general was killed early Monday when a bomb detonated underneath his car in southern Moscow, Russian law enforcement authorities said, making it the third such killing of a senior defense official since last December.

Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, the head of the operational training department at Russia’s General Staff, died “from his wounds,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Investigators released video footage showing a destroyed white Kia Sorento in a residential parking area near apartment buildings. The blast occurred on Yasenevaya Street in Moscow’s Orekhovo-Borisovo Yuzhnoye district.

Police, who launched a murder investigation, said the scene was being examined and that forensic, medical and explosive analyses were underway.

Officials also said they were looking into possible involvement by Ukrainian intelligence services. Ukraine, which has taken credit for similar bomb attacks inside Russia in the past, did not immediately comment on Monday’s deadly blast.

Sarvarov is the third Russian general to have been killed since December 2024, when Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, died after a bomb hidden on an electric scooter near his apartment exploded.

In April, another blast killed Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, who served as the deputy chief of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate. A suspected perpetrator was arrested shortly after the explosion.

Sarvarov had led the General Staff’s operational training department since 2016. Russian media reported that he had taken part in the Chechen wars and was involved in Russia’s military campaign in Syria in 2015 and 2016.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Putin had been informed of the general’s death.