High-ranking Russian officer killed in car blast near Moscow

A senior Russian military officer was killed when a car exploded a short while ago in the town of Balashikha just east of Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee says.

It names the officer as Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and says it has opened a criminal case into the incident.

“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 says in a statement.

The statement does not say who might be behind the incident. Several high-ranking Russian military figures have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine in operations blamed by Moscow on Kyiv.

Russian media outlet Baza, which has sources in Russia’s law enforcement agencies, says a bomb in a parked car had been detonated remotely when the officer — who lived locally — walked past.

The Izvestia newspaper publishes video footage showing a person approaching a line of parked cars outside an apartment complex and an explosion that sent parts of a vehicle flying metres into the air.

Kommersant newspaper says a second person was also killed.

Moskalik, who held the rank of major general, had participated in several high-level Russian delegations, according to defense ministry bulletins and media reports.

He joined the Russian contingent in a meeting in October 2015 of the Normandy Format, a group made up of teams from Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France who oversaw the Minsk agreements designed to end the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces that broke out in 2014.

Moskalik represented the army’s General Staff at the negotiations alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, according to the Kremlin website.

Russia’s RBC newspaper lists Moskalik as a participant in the security subgroup in the Minsk talks.