After the assassination of a prominent general… New bombing rocks Moscow

An explosion on Tuesday night in Moscow killed two traffic police officers and a suspect they were trying to arrest, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Wednesday.

The investigative committee explained that an explosive device exploded as the police approached a suspicious person who was standing near the police car on Yelitskaya Street, south of Moscow.

Russian authorities imposed a tight security cordon in the vicinity of the blast site, while state television, citing eyewitnesses, reported that a loud explosion was heard at around 01:30 local time on Wednesday.

An official account of the Moscow State Traffic Directorate on Telegram announced that the two policemen killed in the line of duty were Lieutenants Ilya Klymanov, 24, and Maxim Gorbunov, 25.

The statement explained that Klymanov joined the Moscow police in October 2023, while Gorbunov joined the police service in February 2022, noting that he left behind a wife and an infant daughter who didn’t exceed nine months.

The explosion took place on a street near the site where General Vanil Sarfarov, head of the operational training department of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed last Monday when an explosive device placed under his car while driving it on Yaseneva Street exploded.

“According to the investigation, on the morning of December 22, an explosive device placed under the bottom of a car exploded on Yaseneva Street in Moscow, resulting in the death of the head of the Operational Training Department of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Vanil Sarvarov,” Svetlana Bachchenko, the official representative of the Russian Investigative Committee,.

The Russian Investigative Committee added that it was investigating the transfer of explosives, noting that one of the hypotheses being verified assumes that the bomb was planted by Ukrainian special services, while Kyiv has not yet commented on the incident.

According to Russian media, Sarfarov, (56), was an officer with combat experience gained during what they described as counterterrorism operations in southern Russia in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He was appointed in 2016 to lead the department responsible for training senior officers in exercises and events for the General Staff and was previously involved in the Russian deployment in Syria.

Russian sources believe that the Ukrainian intelligence services are likely behind the bombing of General Sarfarov’s car, which took place at around 07:00 am last Monday, and the incident sparked a wave of calls from Russian officials and pro-war figures on Kyiv for a quick response, especially since it’s the third bombing in Moscow over the past year that killed a high-ranking Russian officer linked to the war in Ukraine.

Since the start of Russia’s offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, a number of Russian generals, local officials, and pro-war public figures have been killed in bombings that took place inside Russian territory and in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, some of which Kyiv had previously claimed responsibility.

In December 2024, Ukraine’s security services claimed responsibility for the assassination of Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, in Moscow.

It was reported at the time that the explosive device that killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirilov was planted inside a motorcycle parked in front of the apartment building.

In 2022, political activist Daria Dugina, 30, the daughter of philosopher Alexander Dugin, known for his extremist attitudes, was killed while driving a Toyota Land Cruiser that exploded on a highway near Moscow.