A CAR bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow on Monday morning, the latest high-profile army figure to be blown up in a blast that came just hours after Russian and Ukrainian delegates held separate talks in Miami on a plan to end the war.
Kyiv has not commented on the incident, but Russian investigators said they were probing whether the blast was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces”.
The attack was similar to other assassinations of generals and pro-war figures that have either been claimed, or are widely believed to have been orchestrated, by Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head of the Russian General Staff’s training department, was killed when the bomb, which had been placed under his parked car, detonated in a residential quarter of southern Moscow.
AFP reporters at the scene saw a mangled white Kia SUV, its doors and back window blown out. The frame was twisted and charred from the blast.
The scene had been cordoned off by security forces, and investigators were sifting through the debris. Eyewitnesses reported a loud bang.
“We absolutely didn’t expect it. We thought we were safe, and then this happens right next to us,” local resident, Tatiana, 74, told AFP.
“The windows rattled, you could tell it was an explosion,” said Grigory, 70, who also declined to give his surname.
“We need to treat it more calmly. It’s the cost of war,” he added.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it was “working through various lines of enquiry into the murder. One of them involves the possible organisation of the crime by Ukrainian special services.”
Sarvarov fought in the Russian army’s campaigns in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya in the 1990s, according to his official biography on the defence ministry’s website.
He also commanded Russian forces in Syria in 2015-16.
The Kremlin said Putin had been informed about Monday’s killing, which came after three days of talks in Miami as the United States intensifies its efforts to broker an end to the four-year war.
Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and US special envoy Steve Witkoff hailed “progress” in the negotiations on Sunday.
Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev also met with the US team, which included Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Witkoff had also called those meetings “productive and constructive.”