A Kremlin spokesperson piled praise on the senior Russian general Igor Kirillov after he was killed on Tuesday morning.
He – and his aide – died after a device with the equivalent explosive force of 300g of TNT hidden in a scooter exploded in a south-east Moscow residential block.
It was activated remotely, according to Russian reports, and had not been detected in a sweep from bomb experts and specialist dogs beforehand.
As the head of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence Forces, Kirillov was a notorious figure, sanctioned by the UK government and known as a war criminal in Ukraine.
But, in a statement on Telegram, the representative for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, unsurprisingly put a positive spin on his past.
She said he had worked “systematically exposing the crimes of Anglo-Saxons for many years”.
She said: “He worked fearlessly. He did not hide behind people’s backs.
“He met problems head on. For the Motherland, for the truth. Bright be his memory, may he rest in peace.”
According to Reuters and AFP news agency, Ukrainian sources say Kyiv was responsible for the high-ranking general’s death on Tuesday.
They say he was a “legitimate target” and a war criminal.
His death came hours after Ukraine’s SBU security force charged him for a war crime in absentia.
The force said he was responsible for the “mass use of banned chemical weapons” – which goes against international law.
Ukraine says Russia used the chemical weaponry more than 4,800 times under Kirillov’s leadership, a claim Russia denies.
The UK sanctioned Kirillov in October for acting as a “significant mouthpiece for Kremlin disinformation” and for helping to deploy “barbaric weapons”.
He faced an assets freeze and travel ban as a result.
The US also claimed Russia has deployed banned chemical weapons against Ukraine, and used choking agent chloropicrin, used in World War One, for “battlefield gains” over Ukraine.
According to Kyiv, Russia has put more than 2,000 of Ukrainian troops in hospital for chemical poisoning over the war, and three have died. The Kremlin claims these are “baseless” accusations.
Since 2022, Kirillov has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Kyiv is working on a “dirty bomb” – meaning it could spread nuclear material – and that Ukraine wanted to blame Russia for it.
He also claimed the UK was involved in the poisoning of the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, in 2018.
The UK has since said Russian president Vladimir Putin was to blame for the attack.
Kirillov also alleged the US was going to provide biological weapons to Ukraine and that would include targeting Russian troops with malaria infected mosquitos.