The murder of General Kirillov won’t get the over-reaction Ukraine and, probably, its Western backers hoped for
On 17 December, in the early morning, one of Russia’s most important and well-known generals was assassinated in front of his home in Moscow. Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov was the head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Protection forces. (His brief was not, as some mainstream Western media have misleadingly claimed, leading troops focused on the use of such weapons but on defenses against them.) The assassination was carried out with a bomb attached to a parked electric scooter and detonated remotely. The explosion also killed Kirillov’s adjutant, Lieutenant Ilya Polikarpov, and injured their driver.
A suspect was arrested quickly. According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, which is in charge of the case, he is a young man from Uzbekistan who has admitted that he acted on behalf of Ukraine and for money. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service has openly claimed responsibility, even if only after some disinformation-game hiccups in Kiev, about which more below.
The one aspect of this killing that is likely to attract most controversy is its assessment in a legal framework. Kirillov was a high-ranking Russian officer; indeed, according to Reuters, “the most senior Russian military officer to be assassinated in Russia by Ukraine.” And, there clearly are ongoing – whatever you call them – large-scale armed hostilities between Russia and Ukraine that fall under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC, aka humanitarian law), the rules that should bind those engaged in fighting. Yet Russia sees the assassination as a combination of crimes, most importantly as murder and terrorism. Ukraine insists that this was, on the contrary, an act of legitimate killing in war. A UN official has taken Ukraine’s side, to which Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has forcefully objected. Russia will also raise the issue of the assassination at the UN Security Council.
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What to make of the above? This is, in strictly legal terms, a complex case. I, for one, won’t try to offer a definitive categorization. Yet there are several points everyone has to consider: This is not the first Ukrainian assassination in Russia. Previous victims have included the journalist daughter of a public intellectual (who was probably the main target) and a Russian pro-war blogger. Such cases clearly do not fall under legitimate killing in war: Neither public intellectuals (or their journalist daughters) nor mil-bloggers can possibly constitute military targets. They are not combatants. And extending the definition of combatant to such persons would mean trying to legitimize crimes. Since Kirillov’s killing was engineered by, in essence, the same people who have committed these murders, it stands, at least, in a criminal context.
Also to be considered: Kirillov was far from the battlefield. Ukraine may argue that a battlefield is a fuzzy notion, especially in modern war. Yet what is incontrovertible is that the Russian general was killed not by a recognizable combatant, but by a hired assassin whose only stake in the attack was material advantage. This fact alone means that the method used for the attack was, by any definition, criminal. It is a stretch, then, to construe as somehow still legitimate under LOAC an assassination carried out by an organization already known for strictly terrorist attacks and using methods ordinarily associated with organized crime.
Third, public statements from Ukraine have been contradictory, even if Western mainstream media have, as usual, done, in effect, damage control for the Kiev regime by not letting their audiences know. Immediately after the assassination, Mikhail Podoliak, a key adviser to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, denied that Ukraine was behind the killing. His reasoning: Kiev does not resort to ”methods of some kind of terrorist formats.” Oops. That was, of course, a clear admission that the killing did indeed constitute an act of terrorism, just as Russia also maintains.
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And then, Kiev, of course, does use such methods, all the time, quite proudly, actually. Only this time, some officials got so full of themselves that they did not boast only indirectly, in the well-known register of “we can’t confirm yet won’t deny” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). This time, shortly after Podoliak was done lying his face off in public, his colleagues over at military intelligence made it official: Yes, it’s us. What’s left to say? Perhaps, “surprise, surprise”? And a blooper like that also, obviously, makes you wonder about the internal coherence of the Kiev regime: Does the left hand have any idea about what the right one is up to?
In any case, incoming US president Donald Trump’s designated special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg – himself a retired lieutenant-general – has added a dimension to this discussion that goes beyond the strictly legal but certainly matters as well. “There are rules of warfare,” he argued in a TV interview, ”and there are certain things you just don’t do,” such as killing high-ranking officers in their hometown and far from the battlefield. Again, you may disagree: Kellogg’s appeal to what would amount to an unwritten gentleman’s code may well appear naive. Or inconsistent: Has the US obeyed such rules? Hardly.
But even if you don’t follow Kellogg’s logic here, the important point is that it is his: If Trump’s man for Ukraine finds the assassination very distasteful, to say the least, then one of two things have to be true: Either we are looking at an instance of American dissimulation, with Kellogg trying to obscure US involvement, or the new Trump administration is genuinely no longer willing to let Ukraine get away with anything the Kiev regime feels like, including, literally, murder. My guess, despite my profound skepticism regarding US honesty: This time it’s option two. Bad news for Zelensky and co., again.
More generally, Kellogg’s intervention brings us to the question of the politics of this killing, which is more important for the future than its precise legal assessment. One political consequence will occur inside Russia, but much of it is unlikely to be public. In his recent annual telethon, President Vladimir Putin reiterated the Russian position that Kirillov’s assassination was an act of Ukrainian terrorism. At the same time, he reminded his nationwide audience that it was not the first one and noted that the Russian security services have failed to stop these attacks. If that message was not clear enough, he added, in colloquial Russian, that such “very serious flops” show a need for perfecting the work of the security services.
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What we will get to see – at least in outline – is the assassination’s fallout on international politics and, in particular, on the prospect of ending the war over Ukraine. It is true that many observers believe that Kirillov’s killing is linked to his prominent role in the ongoing information war between the West and Russia. His frequent public statements used to address hot-button topics, such as US biolabs in Ukraine, the use of chemical weapons in Syria, or Ukrainian efforts to build a dirty bomb, ie, a primitive nuclear weapon of mass destruction. In addition, Kiev has claimed that Kirillov was responsible for the alleged use of chemical weapons in the war in Ukraine.
Yet, arguably, none of the above explains why Ukraine assassinated Kirillov now, at this precise moment in time. We can only speculate at this point. But in reality the best explanation of the attack is that it was aimed at sabotaging peace prospects by provoking Russia into an over-reaction that the Ukrainian side could then use to drag the West even deeper into the war. This is an old Ukrainian pattern and recent operations by Kiev involving Western missiles, such as a largely foiled attack on a chemical plant, point to an escalation: The Zelensky regime is desperate because it knows that Trump is serious about ending support for it. While the EU-NATO Europeans talk a big deal, they will not be able to compensate for that loss, even if they meant every word they are saying, which is unlikely. Podoliak has just had to admit, for instance, that it is improbable that any Western forces will soon enter the war officially. Soon? Make that ”ever.”
Against this background, the assassination of general Kirillov close to the center of Moscow was meant to serve as a massive provocation. That is also why Ukrainian military intelligence has openly claimed it. Were they alone in organizing this attack? Maybe, maybe not. The direct or indirect involvement of Western intelligence services cannot be excluded. But even if the West was not involved in this specific operation, it remains a fact that these Ukrainian services are its creation. All of this is scandalous, and it is meant to be just that. But it is also transparent. Up until now, the Russian leadership has not over-reacted to Ukrainian provocations. It also understands that both the course of the war on the ground and time are on its side. It would be a surprise if Moscow abandoned its policy of calibrated retribution: There will be a response, but it will not live up to Kiev’s expectations. And that’s a good thing.
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