A Russian general was shot at an apartment building in Moscow on Friday, Russian officials said. 

A high-profile general in Russia’s military has been shot several times and wounded in Moscow.

Lt Gen Vladimir Alekseyev was immediately taken to hospital after the attack in a residential building on the north-western outskirts of the city and his condition is unknown.

Alekseyev is a senior figure in the main directorate of Russia’s military general staff (GRU) and 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 a 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury in the UK.

It did not say anything about the suspected perpetrator.

Several high-ranking military officials have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.

Kyiv has claimed responsibility for some of the hits.

A career military officer, Alekseyev is the first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, according to his online biography.

He led intelligence operations during the Russian intervention in Syria to support the now-ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

And he was also despatched to negotiate with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin during his attempted mutiny against Russian military top brass in 2023.

“Investigative actions and operational search measures are being carried out to identify the person or persons involved in committing the aforementioned crime,” Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement.

Last month a Russian court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison for the 2024 killing of the head of the Russian army’s radiological, chemical and biological defense forces.

The general, Igor Kirillov, was killed when a booby-trapped scooter exploded as he left an apartment block in Moscow, in an attack Kyiv said it had orchestrated.

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