Russian authorities said they have detained a third person in connection with the shooting of a senior military intelligence general in a residential building in Moscow.
The Federal Security Service announced in a statement on February 8 that the person – a Russian citizen – had been detained in Dubai and flown to Moscow.
The agency, known as the FSB, said it had identified two other Russian nationals involved in the shooting: one had been detained in Moscow, while the other is suspected of having traveled to Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev — the number two official in the military intelligence agency widely known as the GRU — was reportedly shot three times on the steps of his apartment building in Moscow on February 6. Officials said he managed to fend off the attacker.
He then underwent emergency surgery for a gunshot wound to a vital organ. Officials said he is expected to recover.
The FSB also released a surveillance video that it said showed the shooter; earlier reports had suggested the person may have entered the building and attacked Alekseyev while posing as a food delivery man.
Alekseyev is at least the fourth general to be attacked or killed since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion nearly four years ago.
Investigators have provided few details about the nature of the attack plan. Officials have blamed Ukraine for previous attacks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov directly blamed Kiev for the shooting of Alekseyev, without providing evidence.
As deputy commander of the GRU, Alekseyev has overseen – or been implicated in – several sabotage or assassination operations around the world. Among other things, he is accused of involvement in the near-fatal Novichok poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018, as well as in the cyberattack on American political parties two years earlier.
He has also been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who co-founded Russia's most notorious mercenary company, the Wagner Group. Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August 2023, which Western intelligence officials later concluded was an assassination. /REL
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