High Ranking Russian Military Commander Assassinated Near Moscow: Reports

A high-ranking Russian officer who had just returned home from the war in Ukraine was shot dead in Moscow in a killing linked to his job, it has been reported.

Nikita Klenkov, 44, who was the deputy head of a military unit and officer of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), was shot at point blank range while he was in a car in the village of Melenki in the Moscow region, an unnamed law enforcement official told RBC.

The Moscow news outlet MK reported that the main line of inquiry is that the murder is associated with his participation in the war in Ukraine.

Klenkov’s GRU unit 43292 serves as a training center for Russia’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) and he had returned from Ukraine’s front line only a week before, according to state media outlet Tass.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which Newsweek has contacted for comment, said the incident took place at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday in which an unknown assailant fired at least three shots into the side window of the driver’s door of a car driven by a local resident.

“As a result, the man died on the spot, while the car continued to move until it ran into the fence of the house,” the statement said, without naming the victim.

The committee also posted video of investigators at the scene examining the car involved, and said that a criminal case into murder and illegal arms possession had been opened and that a motive was being established.

Independent Russian language outlet Important Stories said the victim’s car was a Hyundai Palisade and the scene of the killing was less than a 20-minute drive from the SOF training center. Klenkov lived in the town of Solnechnogorsk, the outlet added. Witnesses described a 2012 Mitsubishi Outlander fleeing the scene, the Telegram channel 112 reported.

Tass reported that preliminary information indicated that the murder had been “planned and ordered,” citing law enforcement sources. Meanwhile, Telegram channel Mash said that the culprit waited for the victim at the entrance to the village, opening fire as soon as he saw the car.

The chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, has called for his regional Moscow department head to submit a report into the initial criminal probe.

However, it is still unclear if the attack was intended as a politically-motivated assassination. On July 24, another officer from Russia’s GRU had his feet blown off in a car bomb attack in Moscow which targeted a Toyota Land Cruiser and injured his wife. Kyiv denied any involvement in the attack.