MOSCOW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - A top Russian military intelligence official was shot in his Moscow apartment building and rushed to hospital on Friday, investigators said,the latest in a series of assassination attempts Russia has blamed on Ukraine.
An unidentified gunman fired several shots at Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence arm, before fleeing the scene, the investigators said. Alexeyev's position meant he would have been closely involved in prosecuting Russia's war in Ukraine.
Alexeyev, 64, whose work has been recognised by President Vladimir Putin with a Hero of Russia award, was reported to be in a serious condition in hospital.
Born in Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union, Alexeyev was placed under U.S. sanctions over Russian cyber interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The European Union imposed sanctions on him over the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in 2018.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind the assassination attempt, which he said - without citing evidence - was designed to sabotage peace talks.
Since the start of the war in 2022, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility for assassinating several senior Russian officers, some of whom have appeared on a public list of Ukraine's enemies.
Speaking to Reuters, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine had nothing to do with this shooting: "We don't know what happened with that particular general - maybe it was their own internal Russian in-fighting."
The Kommersant daily, citing law enforcement sources, said Alexeyev's attacker had been waiting when he left his apartment to go to work and that Alexeyev had sustained gunshot wounds to an arm, a leg and his chest during a struggle.
The Kremlin said it hoped Alexeyev would survive and recover. Putin has been briefed on the shooting and Russia's intelligence services are investigating, it said.
"It is clear that military commanders and high-level specialists are at risk during wartime," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
"But it is not the Kremlin that should be deciding how to ensure their safety. This is a matter for the special services."
SECURITY QUESTIONS
Some pro-Kremlin Russian journalists, war bloggers and members of the public asked why such important figures were not better protected.
"How can this happen? Or is it only in films that we see that such people should have security guards? This is not the first time this has happened," a woman called Ludmila wrote beneath a state media article on the shooting.
A neighbour of Alexeyev, who gave her name as Alessandra, said CCTV in the apartment building had been working well after unconfirmed reports that the gunman had gained access by posing as a food delivery courier.
Alexeyev's boss, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the head of the GRU, has been leading Russia's delegation in negotiations with Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on security-related aspects of a potential peace deal.
The latest round of talks concluded on Thursday. The Kremlin said they were constructive and that talks would continue.
Since December 2024, three other officials of the same rank as Alexeyev have been killed in or near Moscow. The head of the General Staff's army training directorate was killed by a bomb placed under his car on December 22 last year.
Alexeyev was responsible for relations between the Defence Ministry and the Wagner mercenary group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin,which fought in some of the fiercest battles in the early stages of the war in Ukraine.
Prigozhin was critical of the defence establishment and staged a mutiny in June 2023, when Alexeyev was among officials sent to negotiate with him. The mutiny fizzled out and Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months later.
(Reporting by Reuters and Reuters TV; additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov, Mark Trevelyan and Dmitry Antonov, and Daniel Flynn and Tom Balmforth in Kyiv; Writing by Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Kevin Liffey and Timothy Heritage)
