A car bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow on Monday morning, after officials said there was “slow progress” in talks with the United States on how to end the war in Ukraine.
Top negotiators from both Russia and Ukraine were in Miami this weekend for separate meetings with U.S. officials trying to break the impasse over an agreement to end nearly four years of fighting sparked by Moscow’s massive offensive on its neighbor in 2022.
Kiev has not commented on the blast, the latest in a series of similar incidents, but Russian investigators said they suspected it was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces”.
Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head of the training department of the Russian General Staff, was killed when the bomb, placed under his parked car, exploded in a residential area in southern Moscow.
Reporters from Agence France-Presse saw a mangled white Kia SUV at the scene, with its doors and rear window blown off. The frame was twisted and charred by the blast.
The site had been cordoned off by security forces and investigators were sifting through the rubble. Eyewitnesses reported a loud bang.
“We definitely didn’t expect it. We thought we were safe, and then this happens right next to us,” local resident Tatiana, 74, told AFP.
“The windows were rattling, you could see it was an explosion,” said 70-year-old Grigory, who also declined to give his last name.
“We have to deal with it more calmly. It is the cost of war,” he added.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates major crimes, said it was “following several lines of investigation into the murder. One of them concerns the possible organization of the crime by Ukrainian special services.”
Sarvarov fought in the Russian army’s campaigns in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya in the 1990s, according to his official biography on the Defense Ministry website.
‘Slow progress’ in Ukraine peace talks
He was also one of the figures overseeing Russian forces in Syria in 2015-2016.
The Kremlin said Putin had been informed of the killing on Monday, which came after three days of talks in Miami as the United States steps up efforts to end the nearly four-year war.
Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and US special envoy Steve Witkoff praised “progress” in the negotiations on Sunday.
Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev also met with the US team, including Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
Witkoff had also called those meetings “productive and constructive.”
But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said only “slow progress is being observed” in the talks, state media reported on Monday.
An initial 28-point plan to end the war, put forward by US President Donald Trump, met Moscow’s core demands and caused panic in Kiev and European capitals.
Ukraine and its allies have since worked to refine the plan, although Kiev says it is still being asked to make huge concessions, such as ceding the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia.
Moscow has resisted European involvement as it seeks to strike a deal solely with Trump.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed skepticism about whether Russia really wants to end the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and decimated eastern and southern Ukraine.
Since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, Kiev has been blamed for several attacks on Russian military officials and pro-Kremlin figures in Russia and in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
#Russian #general #killed #car #bomb #Moscow #peace #talks #Ukraine #stall