Russian military intel deputy chief wounded in Moscow in apparent assassination attempt
· France 24A senior Russian officer, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, was rushed to hospital after being shot several times in an apartment building in Moscow on Friday, officials said, in the latest apparent assassination attempt of a top Russian military figure.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said "an unidentified individual fired several shots" at Alekseyev, a general who has a senior role in Russia's general staff, before fleeing the scene.
"The victim has been hospitalised," the agency added in a statement.
It did not say anything about the suspected perpetrator.
Car bomb kills senior Russian military officer near Moscow
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Several high-ranking military officials have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.
The most recent officer to be killed was the head of the General Staff's army training directorate, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, who was killed by a bomb under his car on December 22.
Kyiv has claimed responsibility for some of the assassinations.
A career military officer, Alekseyev is the first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, according to his online biography.
He led intelligence operations during the Russian intervention in Syria to support the now-ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.
And he was also dispatched to negotiate with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin during his attempted mutiny against Russian military top brass in 2023.
"Investigative actions and operational search measures are being carried out to identify the person or persons involved in committing the aforementioned crime," Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.
Last month a Russian court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison for the 2024 killing of the head of the Russian army's radiological, chemical and biological defence forces.
The general, Igor Kirillov, was killed when a booby-trapped scooter exploded as he left an apartment block in Moscow, in an attack Kyiv said it had orchestrated.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)