Senior Russian military commander murdered near Moscow: reports

A senior Russian officer who had just returned from the war in Ukraine was shot dead in Moscow in a job-related murder, according to reports.

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

The Moscow news agency MK reported that the main reason for the investigation was that the murder was related to his participation in the war in Ukraine.

Klenkov’s GRU Unit 43292 serves as a training center for the Russian Special Forces (SOF) and he had returned from the Ukrainian front just a week earlier, state media outlet Tass reported.

Russia’s investigative committee Newsweek contacted for comment and said the incident occurred around 9 a.m. Wednesday, in which an unknown assailant fired at least three shots into the driver’s side window of a car driven by a local resident.

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

The committee also released a video of investigators at the scene examining the car involved and said a criminal case had been opened for murder and illegal weapons possession and that a motive was being determined.

Independent Russian-language media Important Stories said the victim’s car was a Hyundai Palisade and the crime scene was less than 20 minutes’ 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, Telegram channel 112 reported.

Tass, citing law enforcement sources, reported that preliminary information indicated the killing was “planned and ordered.” Meanwhile, the Telegram channel Mash reported that the perpetrator waited for the victim at the entrance to the village and opened fire as soon as he saw the car.

The chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, has called on his Moscow regional department head to submit a report on the first criminal investigation.

However, it is still unclear whether the attack was a politically motivated attack. On July 24, another Russian GRU official had his feet blown away in a car bomb attack in Moscow. It was about a Toyota Land Cruiser in which his wife was injured. Kyiv denied any involvement in the attack.