Suspect in shooting of senior Russian general has been detained, Russia says

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Ukraine orchestrated the attack to hinder peace talks (UN Geneva//Flickr).

A senior Russian military official was shot in Moscow and hospitalized early Friday. Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, a deputy chief of Russian military intelligence, was shot several times in a residential building in the northwest of Moscow by an unknown gunman who later fled the scene, reported Russia’s Investigative Committee (RIC), according to NBC News. Investigators have opened a criminal case, are speaking with eyewitnesses, and reviewing surveillance footage, RIC added.

No party or organization has claimed responsibility for shooting Alekseyev, but Moscow accused Ukraine of being behind the killing, as Ukrainian intelligence agencies have targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials since the start of the war. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed without evidence that Ukraine designed the assassination attempt to hinder peace talks, per Reuters. Ukraine has denied this accusation; the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Ukraine had nothing to do with the shooting. “We don’t know what happened with that particular general – maybe it was internal conflict within the Russian politics.” 

Alekseyev was one of the top officers providing Russian President Vladimir Putin with intelligence for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022. He has also been described as a major figure overseeing the country’s private military companies and negotiated with Yevgeny Prigozhin during the Wagner group’s brief mutiny in the summer of 2023. After Prigozhin’s revolt, Alekseyev was believed to have fallen out of favor in Moscow and was reported to have been briefly detained over his links to Wagner, yet he ultimately retained his post.