A high-ranking Russian general, deputy head of the GRU, was seriously injured on February 6 in Moscow, Russian law enforcement agencies reported.
“An unknown person fired several shots at Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev,” investigators reported.
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The Kremlin immediately blamed Ukraine for this. However, Russian authorities have not provided evidence, and some Russian commentators have suggested that Alexeyev has enemies in Russia, The Washington Post reports.
The attack came a day after Russian, Ukrainian and American officials wrapped up two days of talks in Abu Dhabi aimed at ending Russia’s war. After the meetings, Washington and Moscow said they were resuming military contact that had been suspended because of the war. But no breakthrough has come as Russia continues to demand that Ukraine hand over territory in exchange for a ceasefire. The Moscow delegation in Abu Dhabi consisted of military and intelligence officials and was led by Alekseev’s boss, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, head of the GRU.
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No one claimed responsibility for the attack on Alekseev, but Russia quickly pointed the finger at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and accused Kyiv of trying to disrupt the talks in Abu Dhabi.
Although Ukraine's security services have a long-standing campaign of assassinations and attacks on Kremlin officials, Western intelligence agencies have said there is reason to doubt that Ukraine was behind Alexeyev's shooting.
Officials said the attack on him at a time when his boss, Kostyukov, was participating in U.S.-led talks to end the war could derail those talks and anger the Trump administration.
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Ukraine's security services “have carried out such strikes in the past, but it would be pretty crazy of them to do it now,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official.
The former official also noted that the participation in these negotiations of Kirill Budanov — the former head of Ukraine's military intelligence department and now Zelensky's chief of staff — raised the stakes for Kyiv if Budanov's former agency is proven to be linked to the assassination attempt.
“We are not stupid, believe me,” said a former senior Ukrainian security service official who worked closely with Budanov.
The former official said it was “much more likely” that the assassination attempt on Alekseev was related to an “internal issue,” including the general’s role in suppressing an uprising by the Wagner Group, a powerful Russian paramilitary group, in 2023.
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Some Russian commentators suggested that Alekseev could have been targeted by rivals or enemies in Russia, and that disrupting the already failed ceasefire talks, as Lavrov suggested, was an unlikely motive.
Alexeyev's tenure as a senior GRU official coincides with such infamous operations as the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computers ahead of the 2016 US presidential election; the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England; and GRU operations in Syria.
As a reminder, on February 6, an attempt was made in Moscow on the life of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, First Deputy Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to Russian media, an unknown person shot the general several times in the entrance of his apartment building on Volokolamsk Highway. Alekseev was wounded at close range in the back. He is in intensive care.
We should add that death haunts Russian military personnel, officials, and businessmen not only in Russia. For example, Cyprus was recently shaken by news of the death of a senior official at the Russian embassy in Nicosia and the disappearance of the former owner of Uralkali, Vladislav Baumgertner.