A deputy chief of Russia’s military intelligence agency was shot and wounded in Moscow on Friday, February 6, 2026, in an attack that follows a series of assassinations and attempted assassinations of senior military officers that Russia has blamed on Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, 64, was hospitalized after being shot several times by an unidentified assailant at an apartment building in northwestern Moscow, according to a statement from Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko.
Petrenko did not disclose who might be responsible for the attack on Alekseyev, who has served as the first deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, since 2011.
The shooting occurred as Alekseyev’s immediate superior, the head of the Directorate of the General Staff, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, was leading the Russian negotiating team in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for talks with Ukraine and the United States aimed at ending the nearly four-year-old conflict. The talks concluded on Thursday, February 5, 2026.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that President Vladimir Putin was informed about the attack and that law enforcement agencies need to increase protection for senior military officers amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on the attack.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the shooting as a potential “terrorist act” by Ukraine intended to disrupt peace negotiations, though he added that the investigation would be led by law enforcement agencies.
According to the business daily Kommersant, the assailant, posing as a delivery person, shot Alekseyev twice in the stairway of his apartment building, wounding him in the foot and arm. The report states that Alekseyev attempted to disarm the attacker before being shot again in the chest, after which the assailant fled.
Alekseyev, born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, has held a prominent position in Russian military intelligence for over a decade. He was awarded the Hero of Russia medal for his role in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria. In June 2023, state television showed him speaking with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, during the mercenary group’s brief seizure of military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don.
Alekseyev has been subject to sanctions imposed by the United States for alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and by the United Kingdom and European Union over his purported involvement in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian authorities have accused Ukraine of orchestrating several assassinations of military officers and public figures within Russia. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of these incidents.
In December 2024, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, was killed in a car bombing.
In April 2025, Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed by a bomb placed in his car near his apartment building outside Moscow. A Russian man who previously resided in Ukraine pleaded guilty to carrying out the attack, claiming he was paid by Ukraine’s security services.
In December 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the explosion. Ukraine’s security service claimed responsibility for the attack.
Following Moskalik’s death, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated he had received a report from the head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence agency regarding the “liquidation” of top Russian military figures, adding that “justice inevitably comes.”
