Igor Kirillov was a Russian general of considerable standing and he just had a very bad day.

Kirillov, whose remit included chemical and nuclear weapons, was coming out of a residential building in Moscow with an assistant on Tuesday, when a bomb hidden inside a scooter exploded, killing them both.

Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, made no secret that it was responsible, calling Kirillov, the head of Russia’s so-called Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defense Forces, a “legitimate target.” He was charged Monday by Ukraine with “the mass use of banned chemical weapons.”

Kirillov was a well-known propagandist. Just prior to the onset of the war in 2022, he was a leading voice in the Kremlin chorus accusing the United States of operating a chain of nefarious biological weapons labs on Russia’s doorstep.

On Tuesday, in a lengthy lament for the general’s demise, RIA Novosti celebrated Kirillov for exposing an alleged Western plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the service of “discrediting the goals of [Vladimir Putin’s] special military operation.”

Kirillov, Russian state media said, offered “strong evidence” for his absurdist claims, including the notion that Hunter Biden was involved in experiments with “extremely dangerous pathogens” at a network of Pentagon-operated laboratories in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova which, on Kirillov’s telling, “threaten the entire world.”

Images from the scene on Tuesday showed a pair of body bags on the street outside the entryway to a taupe brick building. The structure was charred and the blast shattered several windows.

Although high-ranking Russian officers have died near the frontlines over the course of the conflict, Kirillov becomes the first to be killed inside Russia. There was no official word from Kyiv, but as noted above, the SBU made its culpability for the blast known to Western media outlets.

Dmitri Medvedev, among the Kremlin’s shrillest foreign policy voices, called Kirillov “a true patriot.” “I knew him well,” Medvedev carried on, saccharine. “He was a brilliant professional, reliable and decent.” (I can’t speak to his intellect, nor his reliability, but “decent” Kirillov wasn’t.)

Medvedev went on to describe the Ukrainian state as “worthless,” suggested it shouldn’t exist and accused Kyiv of dragging out the war.

Kyiv has, at various intervals, resorted to brazen acts to inflict psychological losses on a Russian state Putin’s determined to shield from the conflict. Famously, the SBU killed Daria Dugina in a car bomb meant for her father, a delusional, nationalist ideologue.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump suggested Volodymyr Zelensky needs to cut a deal with Putin to end the conflict. Most observers now assume Zelensky will be compelled by the incoming administration in Washington to cede some territory to the Kremlin as part of a settlement.

Last year, at a briefing, general Kirillov detailed what he said was a new Pentagon pilot program. “The United States plans to deliver mosquitoes using drones to infect enemy troops,” he imagined. The drone, he explained, “would deliver a container with insects to a specified area and release them.”