MOSCOW — A high-profile Russian general, who serving as deputy head of Russian military intelligence, was shot and seriously wounded in Moscow on Friday, in the latest attack on top military figures.Lt Gen Vladimir Alexeyev was immediately taken to hospital after the attack in a residential apartment block on the north-western outskirts of the city and his condition is unknown.The Russian Investigative Committee said its officers are at the scene and investigators are searching for the shooter. The committee has opened a criminal case into what it called the attempted murder of a high-ranking defense ministry official.Alexeyev is number two in the main directorate of Russia’s GRU military intelligence and he is the latest high-ranking military figure to have been targeted in the capital since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began almost four years ago.He was placed under European Union sanctions after the GRU was accused of being behind the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury in the UK.Alexeyev has played a significant role during the war in Ukraine, taking part in talks with Ukraine during the Russian siege of Mariupol in 2022.He was also sent to negotiate with the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a short and bloody mutiny in June 2023.His boss at the GRU, Igor Kostyukov, has been in charge of Russia’s negotiating team taking part in talks on security issues with the US and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s Vladimir Putin was being briefed on the shooting. “We wish first of all that the general survives and recovers. We hope that will be the case,” he told reporters.It is not yet known who was behind the shooting Friday morning.Ukraine has claimed some attacks on Russia military figures in the past. Russian intelligence officials claimed they had thwarted an attempted attack on a Russian soldier in St Petersburg at the end of last month.An Uzbek man was jailed in January for the 2024 killing of another general, Igor Kirillov, in an explosion outside a block of flats in Moscow. Ukraine’s SBU intelligence had said it was behind the attack.In December 2025, another high-ranking officer in the GRU, Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, was killed when an explosive device detonated under a car in Moscow. He was in charge of the armed force’s operational training department, according to Russia’s investigative committee. — Agencies
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