A Russian general who serves as a senior military intelligence official in the Defense Ministry was the target of an apparent assassination attempt on Friday morning after an unidentified gunman shot him several times at his apartment in Moscow, police investigators said, marking the latest in a string of attacks against Russian security officials since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top investigative body, identified the targeted official as Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, the first deputy head of the Defense Ministry’s GRU military intelligence agency. Investigators said Alekseyev was taken to a Moscow hospital but did not disclose his condition.
Authorities launched a manhunt for the suspected shooter, who was said to have fled the area after shooting the general at his apartment. Investigators said they opened a criminal probe into the incident, adding that they were reviewing security camera footage and questioning eyewitnesses.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has not commented on the apparent assassination attempt.
Unconfirmed reports by news outlets with purported links to law enforcement claimed Alexeyev was in critical condition after being shot in the back in the elevator lobby of his apartment building sometime around 7 a.m. on Friday.
Friday’s apparent assassination attempt is just the latest in a string of attacks inside Russia targeting security officials. Since December 2024, three generals have been killed in or near Moscow, with the most recent attack having taken place late last year.
The shock killings have raised questions about how the Russian military protects some of its most senior officials.
In December, the head of the General Staff’s army training directorate, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, was killed when a bomb detonated underneath his car in southern Moscow. In April, another blast killed Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, who served as the deputy chief of the Russian General Staff’s main operational directorate.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of the Russian military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, died in December 2024 after a bomb hidden on an electric scooter near his apartment exploded.
Ukraine has taken responsibility for some of the killings.
Alexeyev, who was born in Soviet Ukraine’s Vinnytsia region, began his career in the Spetsnaz special forces. He 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.
In 2023, the general was among a group of senior military officers involved in negotiations with Yevgeny Prigozhin when he and fighters from his private military company Wagner staged an armed mutiny against the Defense Ministry over fierce disagreements about how the Ukraine war was being managed.
Before the full-scale invasion, Alexeyev was responsible for coordinating military campaigns in eastern Ukraine and Syria in the mid-2010s. He has served as first deputy head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, an intelligence agency that reports to the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff, since 2011.
The United States sanctioned the general for alleged cyber operations targeting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The European Union sanctioned him for the 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Scribal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom.
Alekseyev serves directly under Igor Kostyukov, who heads the GRU. Kostyukov led Russia’s delegation at trilateral talks with Ukrainian and American officials in Abu Dhabi this week.
