Ukraine said Tuesday it killed a senior Russian army official in Moscow using a bomb packed into a scooter outside an apartment block.

General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons unit, is the highest-ranking victim of a string of assassinations during Moscow’s offensive on its neighbour.

Throughout the almost three-year conflict, Kyiv has claimed to be behind killings and attacks on Russians and former Ukrainian officials — including brazen hits deep behind the front lines — who have backed the Kremlin’s military campaign.

– Darya Dugina –

The first assassination that shocked Russia was the August 2022 killing of nationalist Darya Dugina — the daughter of hardline Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin.

Dugina, 29, was killed outside Moscow when a bomb attached to the car she was driving detonated. Many believe her father was the intended target.

Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack, which never claimed or denied it.

– Vladlen Tatarsky –

In April 2023, pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky — real name Maxim Fomin — was killed when a statuette he was handed exploded at a cafe in Saint Petersburg.

Russia sentenced a 26-year-old woman, Daria Trepova, to 27 years in prison for the killing — the harshest sentence for a woman in Russian history — accusing her of acting on Kyiv’s orders.

Her supporters said she was tricked by Ukrainian security services into believing she was handing him a secret recording device.

While refusing to officially claim responsibility, the head of Ukraine’s SBU security service this year said the statuette had been loaded with 400 grams of explosives.

– Attempt on Zakhar Prilepin –

Pro-Kremlin writer and nationalist Zakhar Prilepin was seriously wounded in a May 2023 car explosion that killed another person near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, hundreds of kilometres east of Moscow.

Prilepin, one of Russia’s best known novelists, had fought alongside pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine in 2014, and had become a vocal supporter of the 2022 full-scale offensive.

Ukraine called him a “real war criminal” and revelled in the attack, though did not claim formal responsibility.

– Pro-Russian Ukrainians –

Kyiv has also orchestrated attacks on its former officials who have defected to Russia since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and started backing armed separatists in the east, or 2022.

Pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Illya Kyva was shot dead in a Moscow suburb in December last year, in a killing claimed by Ukraine.

Kyva was a former Ukrainian MP who defected when Russia launched its military offensive.

In another failed assassination attempt, a former Ukrainian security agent Vasily Prozorov who defected to Moscow survived a bomb detonation in his car in a residential corner of Moscow in April this year.

– Crimea and east Ukraine –

Kyiv has also claimed regular assassinations of officials in Russian occupied Ukrainian territories, targeting Moscow-installed lawmakers, police chiefs, prosecutors and agency heads.

The latest — on December 9 — was the killing of the former head of the notorious Olenivka prison, Sergei Yevsyukov, in a car blast in Donetsk. Kyiv says dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in a missile strike on the prison in 2022.

Last month Ukraine said it orchestrated a car bombing in Moscow-annexed Crimea that killed a high-ranking naval officer, named by Kyiv as Valery Trankovsky.

– Army officers –

Some other Russian army officers are also reported to have been targeted.

Kirillov’s killing came just five days after Ukrainian media reported that Mikhail Shatsky, a software developer who they said oversaw the modernisation of Russian cruise missiles was shot dead outside Moscow. Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility.

In October, Russian media reported that an officer who fought in Ukraine, Nikita Klenkov, was killed in his car as he was on leave from the front outside Moscow in a mysterious hit.