A senior Russian general has been killed after a home-made explosive device ripped through a parked car in the town of Balashikha, east of Moscow, according to the Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in the country.
Authorities named Lieutenant-General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the main operational directorate of the military’s General Staff, as the victim of Friday’s attack, which appeared to be similar to previous attacks on Russians linked to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
“According to available data, the explosion occurred as a result of the detonation of a homemade explosive device filled with destructive elements,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement on Friday.
Investigators added that they had opened a probe into the deadly attack after a Volkswagen Golf blew up outside a block of flats in Balashikha. The statement did not say who might be behind the incident.
Investigators said they had opened a probe into murder and smuggling explosives after the Volkswagen Golf blew up outside a block of flats in the town of Balashikha, east of Moscow.
Images from the scene posted on social media showed a blaze that gutted a car. The deadly attack comes four months after another Russian general was killed along with his deputy in an explosion in Moscow.
Russia’s Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov says one person was critically injured in the attack. Ukraine has not yet commented on the claim.
The Agentstvo investigative news site, citing leaked information, said Moskalik lived in Balashikha, but the Volkswagen was not registered to him.
Security camera footage posted by the Izvestia newspaper showed a massive explosion, sending fragments flying into the air. The blast happens just as someone can be seen walking towards the car.
The “blast was caused by the triggering of an improvised explosive device” packed with metal fragments designed to cause maximum harm, investigators said.
According to the Kremlin website, Moskalik was a Russian military representative at the “Normandy format” talks on Ukraine in 2015, amid the conflict between Kyiv and Russian-backed separatists.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made him general-lieutenant in 2021.
Friday’s bombing came just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to meet with Putin in Moscow to discuss a U.S.-brokered peace plan for Ukraine.
