Russian General Kirillov Was Hospitalized With Gunshot Wound Months Before Assassination – RFE/RL

The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons unit was hospitalized with a gunshot wound months before he was assassinated late last year, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported Monday, citing a database of military medical records obtained from a Russian military defector.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was admitted to Moscow’s Main Military Clinical Hospital on March 3, 2024, with a gunshot wound to his upper right thigh and discharged five weeks later. The injury, which had not been previously disclosed, was reportedly unrelated to combat.

The date, location and circumstances of Kirillov’s shooting remain unclear, RFE/RL said.

Kirillov and his assistant were killed in mid-December when a bomb went off outside his apartment building in southeastern Moscow. Ukraine’s security services have claimed responsibility for the targeted killing.

RFE/RL reported that Kirillov was among the more than 165,000 servicemen hospitalized in Russian Defense Ministry facilities between February 2022 and mid-June 2024. Of those cases, 80,200 were classified as “light” injuries, 58,600 as “moderate” and 2,200 as “severe” or “critical.” 

The database of hospitalizations was leaked to the news outlet by Sergeant Alexei Zhilyayev, a military evacuation unit commander seeking political asylum in France. Zhilyayev said the database is routinely circulated via email to military commands to track personnel.

Russian military medics are pressured to downplay injury severity to return soldiers to combat, according to Zhilyayev. The database also includes private mercenaries from at least 10 foreign countries but does not cover the last eight months of Russia’s three-year invasion of Ukraine — some of the war’s bloodiest months, according to the report.

On Monday, the number of verified Russian troops killed in Ukraine reached 95,323, according to an independent tally by the BBC’s Russian service and the Mediazona news website. However, journalists believe the true number of Russian military deaths is about twice that figure.