Russia’s FSB security service said Tuesday that it arrested a third person suspected of being involved in last week’s attempted assassination of senior military intelligence officer Vladimir Alexeyev, which authorities in Moscow have blamed on Ukraine.
Alexeyev, a lieutenant general who serves as first deputy head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, was hospitalized after being shot several times at an apartment in Moscow on Friday morning. He is conscious but remains in critical condition, media reported.
The FSB identified the latest person to be arrested in connection with the shooting as Pavel Vasin, the 44-year-old son of Viktor Vasin, who was arrested in Moscow shortly after Alexeyev was shot.
Besides the younger and elder Vasin, the FSB said the suspected shooter, a Ukrainian-born Russian citizen named Lyubomir Korba, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday and extradited to Russia.
A fourth person suspected of being involved in the assassination plot, identified as Zinaida Serebritskaya, was said to have fled to Ukraine. Russian police issued a warrant for her arrest.
Pavel Vasin is accused of providing his father and Korba with “vehicles that were used for physical surveillance and for retrieving weapons from a hidden cache.”
In an FSB interrogation video, he is shown describing how Korba recruited him on behalf of Ukraine’s SBU security service last September.
“I carried out Korba’s assignments regarding equipment and drove him wherever he told me to,” Vasin said in the video.
The FSB claimed the younger Vasin was tracking two other senior Russian military officers for possible assassination attempts. His father, meanwhile, was accused of renting an apartment for Korba and providing him with a public transportation cards.
Earlier this week, the FSB claimed that Pavel Vasin holds Polish citizenship and was “involved in his [father’s] recruitment with the assistance of Polish intelligence services.”
Poland dismissed the allegation as “typical disinformation.”
The attempted assassination of Alexeyev is just the latest in a string of attacks inside Russia targeting senior military officials. Since December 2024, three generals have been killed in or near Moscow, with the most recent killing having taken place late last year.
No one has claimed responsibility for the shooting of Alexeyev, but Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has dismissed allegations that Kyiv was involved and suggested the incident was the result of “internal Russian infighting.”
Alexeyev, who was born in Soviet Ukraine’s Vinnytsia region, was placed in charge of intelligence operations in Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin sidelined the FSB security service in the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
