RUSSIA HAS DETAINED a suspect in the killing of the head of the army’s chemical weapons division, investigators have said.

Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defence Forces, was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when an explosive device attached to an e-scooter went off.

The Russian security service said the suspect was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence, according to state media agencies.

“A national of Uzbekistan, born in 1995, was arrested on suspicion of having committed the attack that cost the life of the commander of Russian radiological, chemical and biological defence forces, Igor Kirillov, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov”, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The man said he had been “recruited by Ukrainian special forces”, it added.

The statement said that the suspect told interrogators that he had come to Moscow to carry out the attack, and that a camera mounted on the dashboard of a rented car parked outside the building had filmed the attack and streamed it “live to the attack organisers, in the (Ukrainian) city of Dnipro”.

The man was promised $100,000 to carry out the attack, as well as the possibility to settle “in a European country”, the statement said.

Kirillov was the most senior military figure assassinated in Russia since Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine nearly three years ago.

The blast went off in a residential area in southeast Moscow a day after President Vladimir Putin hailed Russian troop successes in Ukraine.

Kirillov, 54, was recently sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service told reporters on Tuesday that it was behind the early morning explosion in what it called a “special operation”, calling Kirillov a “war criminal”.