A senior Russian general was killed in a car bombing just outside Moscow on Friday, hours before U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for high-level ceasefire talks on the war in Ukraine.
Russia's Investigative Committee confirmed the death of Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The explosion, which occurred in Balashikha, a suburb roughly 20 miles east of central Moscow, involved a Volkswagen Golf rigged with an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel.
Russian state media reported that Moskalik was near the car at the time of the explosion but not inside it. The military blog Rybar said the general had just exited a nearby building when the device detonated. CNN reported it could not independently verify that account. Russian officials have not identified any suspects, and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova labeled the incident a "terror attack." The Investigative Committee announced it had opened a criminal probe and that forensic experts were already examining the scene.
Moskalik's killing is the second high-profile assassination of a Russian military official in recent months. In December, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, was killed by a bomb hidden in an electric scooter outside his Moscow apartment. The Russian government blamed Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Security Service later acknowledged responsibility.
Russian authorities have not confirmed any link between the two attacks, but the timing of Moskalik's death underscored the security risks surrounding the ongoing conflict.
The bombing occurred just as Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow for a scheduled meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. Russian state news agency Tass reported that Witkoff also met with senior Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev and former U.S. ambassador Yuri Ushakov, now a presidential aide.
"This is Witkoff's fourth trip to Russia since Trump came back into the office in January, and the second one this month," Tass noted.
The talks come as Trump nears his self-imposed 100-day deadline to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, said Moscow was "ready to reach a deal" but noted that "some specific points" still needed to be "fine-tuned."
