Top Russian general is shot and rushed to hospital in Moscow 

MOSCOW - A senior Russian miitary officer, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, was rushed to hospital after being shot in Moscow on Feb 6, investigators said, in the latest of a series of attacks on top military officials.

Lt-Gen Alexeyev is deputy chief of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence.

His boss, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, has been leading Russia’s delegation in negotiations with Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on security-related aspects of a potential peace deal.

The Moscow prosecutor's office said Lt-Gen Alexeyev, who was born in Soviet Ukraine, had been shot several times at a residential building in north-west Moscow by an unknown assailant who fled the scene.

Several senior Russian officers have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine, with Moscow blaming the attacks on Kyiv.

In some cases, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility.

Since December 2024, three other officials of the same rank as Lt-Gen Alexeyev have been killed in or near Moscow.

The attacks have angered Russia’s influential war bloggers, prompting questions about why such senior people have lacked adequate protection.

In at least two cases, the targets were killed right outside their homes.

The head of the General Staff’s army training directorate, Lt-Gen Fanil Sarvarov, was killed by a bomb
placed under his car on Dec 22.

Lt-Gen Alexeyev was responsible for relations between the Defence Ministry and the Wagner mercenary group, led by Mr Yevgeny Prigozhin, which fought in some of the fiercest battles in the early stages of the war in Ukraine.

Mr Prigozhin was fiercely critical of the defence establishment and staged a mutiny in June 2023, when Lt-Gen Alexeyev was one of the top officials sent to negotiate with him.

The mutiny fizzled out, and Mr Prigozhin died in a plane crash
two months later. REUTERS