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Russian authorities said Sunday that the man suspected of shooting a deputy chief of Russia’s military intelligence agency in Moscow was detained in Dubai and handed over to Russia, and they alleged he was working on behalf of Ukraine.
Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev was hospitalized after being shot several times Friday by an assailant at an apartment building in northwestern Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said. The attack followed a series of assassinations of senior military officers that Russia has blamed on Ukraine.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said a Russian citizen, Lyubomir Korba, was detained in Dubai on suspicion of carrying out the shooting. In a statement on its website, FSB said it had also identified two “accomplices,” one of whom was detained in Moscow and another who “left for Ukraine.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee said Sunday on the Telegram messaging service that Korba arrived in Moscow in December “on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence services to commit a terrorist attack.”
Asked about the shooting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday it would be up to law enforcement agencies to pursue the investigation but described it as an apparent “terrorist act” by Ukraine intended to derail peace talks. There was no immediate response from Kyiv to a request for comment on the Russian allegations.
Shooting follows peace talks in Abu Dhabi
The shooting came a day after Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators wrapped up two days of talks in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital, aimed at ending the nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine. The Russian delegation was led by Alekseyev’s boss, military intelligence chief Admiral Igor Kostyukov.
Alekseyev, 64, has served as the first deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, since 2011.
He was decorated with the Hero of Russia medal for his role in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria. In June 2023, he was shown on state TV speaking to mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, when his Wagner Group seized the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don during his short-lived mutiny.
Lethal Russian airstrike hits Ukraine overnight
A Russian airstrike on a residential area in eastern Ukraine killed one person and wounded two, officials said Sunday, after Zelenskyy said the U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a peace deal.
The attack on the city of Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, caused a fire in a nine-storey apartment block, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
Russia also struck energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Poltava region overnight into Sunday, said Serhii Koretskyi, chief executive of Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, Naftogaz.
Russia has hammered Ukraine’s power grid, especially in winter, throughout the war. It aims to weaken the Ukrainian will to resist in a strategy that Kyiv officials call “weaponizing winter.”
Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that the U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the war. If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides, he said.
“The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,” the Ukrainian president said. “And they say that they want to do everything by June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all events.”
