MOSCOW

The Russian Investigative Committee reported on Friday that a senior military officer was killed in a car explosion in the Moscow region on Friday morning.

🚨 Senior Russian military officer killed in a car explosion near Moscow

Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff operations directorate, died after an explosive device detonated under his vehicle https://t.co/Rng5zgO0xE pic.twitter.com/2lFKjQju3p

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Svetlana Petrenko, a spokesperson for the committee, confirmed that Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff, was in the vehicle when an explosive device detonated.

“The explosive device had a force equivalent to more than 300 grams of TNT,” Petrenko told reporters in Moscow.

In a later statement, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that they have "reason to believe" that Ukraine's special services were involved in the killing, citing Moskalik's earlier participation in talks on the conflict in the Donbas region.

Zakharova went on to argue that confirmation of Ukraine's alleged involvement in Moskalik's death would prove Kyiv's intent to escalate the ongoing war and efforts to ignore proposals on a settlement.

The incident follows the death of another senior Russian military official last year.

Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Defense Troops, was also killed in a similar attack, for which Ukraine’s intelligence services claimed responsibility.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, several other Russian public figures, including war reporters, have been killed in explosions attributed to Ukrainian special services.

Ukrainian authorities have neither confirmed nor denied any involvement in Moskalik's killing.