A senior Russian general has been killed in a car bomb attack in Moscow, officials have confirmed.
Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) – the main federal investigating authority in the country – confirmed Gen Yaroslav Moskalik died when a Volkswagen Golf car exploded after an improvised explosive device stuffed with pellets went off.
Local media reported that the car was parked next to the general’s house in the eastern suburb of Balashikha and exploded as he walked past it.
Moskalik represented Russia’s General Staff in talks with Ukraine in Paris in 2015, which resulted in the Minsk agreements set up to end the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces that started in 2014.
Lavrov earlier said Moscow was “ready to reach a deal” with the US to end the Ukraine war, although some elements needed to be “fine-tuned”
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, suggested his country may have to give away territory as part of any peace deal.
Drone attacks on Ukraine continued overnight into Friday.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 103 drones, which killed three people, including a child and a 76-year-old woman, in the town of Pavlohrad, in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
In February this year, Armen Sargsyan, the leader of a pro-Russian paramilitary group in eastern Ukraine, died in hospital after an explosion in the entrance hall of a residential building in north-west Moscow. No one claimed responsibility for that attack.
Last year, a high-ranking general in the Russian armed forces, Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, and his assistant were killed in Moscow by Ukraine’s SBU security service.
Kirillov, head of the Radiation, Biological and Chemical Defence Forces, was outside a residential block when a device hidden in a scooter was detonated remotely, SK said.
An SBU source at the time told the us that Kirillov was “a legitimate target” and alleged he had carried out war crimes.
