A senior Russian military officer has been killed in a car bombing in Moscow, in what officials describe as the latest apparent targeted attack on a high-ranking figure since the war in Ukraine began.
Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian armed forces operational training department, died on Monday after an explosive device planted under a car detonated in a residential car park in the south of the capital, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
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The 56-year-old was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries but later died, investigators confirmed. An inquiry has been opened into murder and the illegal trafficking of explosives.
“Investigators are pursuing various motives for the murder,” the committee said in a statement. “One of the theories is that the crime was organised by Ukrainian special services.”
Ukraine has not commented on the allegation.
Images released by Russian state media showed a badly damaged white vehicle with its doors blown out, surrounded by other parked cars near an apartment block. Forensic teams were seen working at the scene hours after the blast.
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According to Russian media reports, Sarvarov had led the armed forces training department for nine years and previously took part in combat operations during the Chechen wars and the Ossetian Ingush conflict. He also oversaw Russian military operations in Syria between 2015 and 2016, when Moscow backed the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was informed of Sarvarov’s death immediately through security service channels.
The killing adds to a growing list of high-profile assassinations and bomb attacks in Moscow since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Several of those attacks have been blamed by Russian authorities on Ukrainian intelligence services.
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Among previous victims was Lt Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the main operational department of the General Staff, who was killed by a car bomb near Moscow last April. In December 2024, Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of Russia’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, died after an explosive device hidden in a scooter detonated outside a residential building. A Ukrainian source later told the BBC that Kirillov was killed by Ukraine’s security service, though Kyiv did not officially confirm this.
Other victims have included Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent nationalist figure, who was killed in a suspected car bombing in 2022, and pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who died in a cafe bombing in St Petersburg in 2023.
