Infamous mouthpiece behind Russia’s chemical weapons

Igor Kirillov, who died in an explosion in Moscow, was the head of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological protection forces, accused by the West of overseeing the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s security service SBU said it was behind the explosion, which it described as a special operation against a legitimate target.

According to Russian officials, Kirillov and an aide were killed by explosives planted in an electric scooter that blew up as he left the building where he was staying on Ryazansky Prospect in southeast Moscow.

He was notorious for outlandish briefings at the Russian Ministry of Defense, which led the British Foreign Office to label him as one “important mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation”.

Kirillov was much more than just a mouthpiece: He headed the Tymoshenko Academy of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection before leading the Russian army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops in 2017.

This was announced by the British Foreign Office that the force he commanded had used “barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine,” highlighting the widespread use of counterinsurgency agents and “several reports of the use of the toxic asphyxiant chloropicrin.”

On the eve of his murder, Ukraine’s SBU said he had been named in absentia in a criminal case over the “mass use” of banned chemical weapons on Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts.

It cited “more than 4,800 cases of use of chemical ammunition by the enemy” on Ukrainian territory since the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

Toxic substances were used in both drone attacks and combat grenades, it said.

Kirillov gained notoriety since the start of the war with a series of claims directed against both Ukraine and the West, none of which were based on fact.

Among his most egregious claims were the following: The USA had built biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used to justify the large-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022.

He presented documents in March 2022 that he claimed were seized by Russia on the day of the invasion on February 24 – which were amplified by pro-Kremlin media but dismissed by independent experts.

Kirillov’s infamous accusations against Ukraine continued this year.

Last month he claimed that “one of the primary objectives” of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Russian border region of Kursk was the capture of the Kursk nuclear power plant.

He presented a slideshow purportedly based on a Ukrainian report claiming that in the event of an accident, only Russian territory would be exposed to radioactive contamination.

One of Kirillov’s repeated themes was that Ukraine wanted to develop a “dirty bomb.”

Two years ago he claimed that “two organizations in Ukraine have specific instructions for making a so-called ‘dirty bomb.’ This work is in its final stages.”

His claims were rejected by Western countries as “patently false”.

But Kirillov’s claims prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to warn that if Russia suggested that Kiev was preparing this type of weapon, it meant only one thing – that Russia was already preparing it.

Kirillov returned to his dirty bomb claims last summer, this time claiming the discovery of a chemical weapons laboratory near Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that the Russians captured last February.

He claimed that Kiev was violating the International Chemical Weapons Convention with the support of Western countries with a number of substances, including the psychochemical weapon BZ as well as hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen chloride.

His death is seen by Kremlin loyalists as a blow but also as evidence of Ukraine’s ability to target senior officials in Moscow.

Deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house, Konstantin Kosachev, said his death was an “irreparable loss.”