MOSCOW: Russia said Monday that a gunman who shot and wounded a top Russian military intelligence officer in Moscow last week before fleeing to Dubai was acting on Kyiv’s orders. High-ranking general Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several times in his apartment block in Moscow and was hospitalised. There have been a string of assassinations of Russian army officials on Russian soil during Moscow’s almost four-year Ukraine offensive.Russia’s FSB security service said Russian citizen Lyubomir Korba, born in 1960, shot Alekseyev “on the orders of Ukraine’s SBU” security services after being recruited and trained in Ukraine.
FSB said Korba’s son, who lives in Poland, was involved in his recruitment process. Moscow said over the weekend that a Russian man in his 60s was arrested in Dubai and handed over to Russia over the attempted killing. “On the day of the assassination, Korba got into the building where the military man lived, waited until he appeared in the lift lobby and shot four times.” In a statement, FSB said Korba was recruited in Ukraine’s Ternopil last year and sent into Russia through Moldova and Georgia, adding he was promised $30,000 for the killing. It said he acted with two accomplices – naming them as Viktor Vasin and Zinaida Serebritskaya.It accused Vasin of being a supporter of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Ukraine has claimed some of the killings in Russia, but has denied being behind the attempt on Alekseyev. Kremlin admitted last week that army officials in Russia were under threat during the offensive in Ukraine. afp