A Western-sanctioned Russian military intelligence chief has been rushed to hospital in critical condition after being repeatedly shot at a residential building in Moscow, the Kremlin says.

64-year-old Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev was hit with “several shots” on the 24th floor of a residential block in north-west Moscow on Friday morning. Russian state media says he was rushed to hospital in critical condition and the national Investigative Committee has launched a case into attempted murder and illegal trafficking of firearms.

General Alekseyev is just the latest in a steady stream of senior Russian officers attacked at their homes or out in public since Moscow launched its renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While Kyiv’s intelligence services are generally blamed or take the credit for these decapitation strikes, Ukraine has yet to officially comment on this attempted assassination at the time of publication.

Ukrainian state media notes General Alekseyev was the deputy chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Moscow’s foreign military intelligence agency, known as the GRU) and in addition to his role in the invasion of Ukraine was also a known player in Russia’s response to the Wagner Group mutiny in 2023. Wagner Group mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin turned their tanks away from the Ukrainian frontline and headed for Moscow in summer 2023, a rebellion against what was said to have been the Kremlin’s mishandling of the Ukraine War.

The mutiny ultimately failed and Prigozhin died in mysterious circumstances months later. It is stated Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev was a key figure in halting the rebellion, having appealed directly to revolting Wagner Group troops to stop, and personally negotiated with Prigozhin over the affair. Indeed, a 2023 paper by the Royal United Services Institute of London suggests Alekseyev was likely Prigozhin’s handler within the Russian state.

But General Alekseyev is best known for his alleged involvement in the notorious chemical weapon attack against the United Kingdom known as the 2018 Salisbury Poisoning. The potent nerve agent Novichok was smuggled into Britain and used in an attempted assassination of Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal who had been a double agent for British intelligence and who settled in England after being exchanged in a spy swap.

The attempted assassination was botched, however, and the target survive. Yet the historic city of Salisbury was contaminated with the nerve agent necessitating a major clean-up operation, an unconnected member of the public was killed by exposure, and an investigating police officer was hospitalised by touching a door handle that had nerve agent smeared on it.

In 2019, Alekseyev and his GRU boss Igor Kostyukov were named when European sanctions including visa bans and asset freezes against Russia for the Salisbury attacks were launched.

Alekseyev’s name and biography appeared on the Ukrainian ‘Peacemaker’ [Myrotvorets Center] website, a list of “traitors, militants, mercenaries, terrorists, Russian war criminals” for the benefit of “the Security Service of Ukraine”. The site declares Alekseyev a “war criminal”, and that he was responsible for “the subversive intelligence organization against Ukraine”.

The Kremlin responded to Friday’s shooting, stating they were attempting to locate the gunman who had fled the scene. President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the President had been briefed on the shooting and reflected that “It is clear that such military officials and highly qualified specialists are under threat during wartime”.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov linked the shooting to ongoing peace negotiations, which met again this week in the trilateral format between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, claiming the attempted slaying proves Ukraine isn’t serious about peace. He said: “This terrorist act once again confirmed the Zelensky regime’s commitment to constant provocations aimed at disrupting the negotiating process, and its readiness to do everything possible to persuade its Western sponsors not to lag behind the United States in efforts to throw them off course toward achieving a fair settlement.”

Lavrov’s remarks may have been intended to be darkly ironic or sardonic, given Ukraine makes the same assertions about Russia’s constant air-raids on Ukrainian cities during negotiations proving they aren’t interested in peace.

The shooting of General Alekseyev follows the car bomb assassination of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov in December, apparently part of a campaign of what Ukraine calls “liquidations” of Russians, and of Ukrainian “traitors” and “collaborators”. Summarising previous reporting:

Senior officer General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in April 2025, Major General Mikhail Evgenievich Gudkov was killed by a missile strike in July, and Igor Kirillov was killed by an IED outside his apartment December 2024.

Also  in December 2024 Ukraine claimed the “liquidation” of a Russian missile scientist in Moscow by shooting, and the assassination by car bomb of a Ukrainian citizen, the prison governor in an occupied zone, who was accused of war crimes.

In November 2024 a senior naval officer accused of war crimes was assassinated in Sevastopol, Crimea, also taken out with a car bomb. Russia confirmed the killing, calling it a terrorist attack. As noted at the time: “Russian media reported that the explosion tore off Trankovsky’s legs and he died from blood loss”.

In October 2024, a high-ranking Russian officer involved in the special operations forces was assassinated just days after returning to Moscow from the Ukraine front lines. Nikita Klenkov was shot through his car window by a lurking gunman who was able to escape.

Just days before that, the head of security at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was another victim to a Ukrainian car bomb. Kyiv claimed the assassination, calling Andriy Korotkyy a war criminal who had been “involved in the organization and execution of war crimes and repression of Ukrainians under occupation”, making the slaying justified “retribution”.

In April 2024, a Moscow-loyal Ukrainian official “collaborator” in occupied Luhansk who ran the state education agency was killed by a car bomb. He was accused of allowing Russian propaganda into children’s classrooms.

Formerly reasonably mainstream pre-war Ukrainian politicians have been the subject of liquidations too. In December 2023, Ilya Kiva — who had been a member of Parliament in the Ukrainian Rada until the wartime purge of dissenting lawmakers under martial law — was shot in the head. The Ukrainian intelligence services called him a “top traitor, collaborator and propagandist… criminal” and claimed the assassination.

The month before in November 2023 Ukraine also claimed the killing of Mikhail Filiponenko of occupied Luhansk, also a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker. Ukrainian intelligence said: “He was involved in the organization of torture camps in the occupied territories of the Luhansk region, where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were subjected to inhumane torture. Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people” and said he was blown up in a car bomb by partisans.

In some cases, the means of collecting intelligence on assassination targets by Ukrainian spies is very characteristically modern. When Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky was shot dead while jogging in Krasnodar it is stated he may have been tracked by GPS fitness app Strava.