Senior Russian general shot and wounded in Moscow: Officials

A senior Russian military official who plays a major role in the country’s intelligence services has been taken to hospital after being shot and wounded in Moscow.

In a statement released on Friday, Moscow’s Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said that "an unidentified individual fired several shots" at Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy chief of military intelligence. He was hospitalized in the wake of the incident.

Petrenko said a criminal case of attempted murder and illegal trafficking of firearms has been opened over the incident that took place in northwestern Moscow.

"Investigators and forensic experts from the Moscow Investigative Committee are currently working at the scene, reviewing CCTV footage, and interviewing eyewitnesses," she added.

Petrenko further said that authorities are working to identify the person or persons involved in the shooting.

A report by Russian business daily Kommersant said the shooter posed as a delivery person and fired at Alekseyev in the stairway of his apartment building, wounding the general in the foot and arm.

In an ensuing scuffle, Alekseyev tried to wrestle the gun away and was shot again in the chest before the assailant fled the scene, the report said. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that security services were carrying out their duties, and all information on the assassination attempt is being reported to President Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind the shooting, defining it as a "terrorist act."

The top Russian diplomat said that the attack confirmed Ukraine's "focus on constant provocations" aimed at disrupting peace negotiations to end the nearly four-year war.

Lavrov further said that the shooting proved Kiev is willing to "do anything to convince its Western sponsors to keep up with the US in its efforts to derail them from achieving a fair settlement."

Alekseyev has served as the first deputy head of the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate since 2011. He also participated in the planning and oversight of combat operations during the Russian forces’ military operation against Western-backed militancy in Syria.

Ukraine to cede land, shrink army in new US peace plan: Report

The US has drafted a new peace plan for Russia and Ukraine, under which Kiev will reportedly have to cede land and limit the size of its military.

Since the start of the Ukraine war, which will enter its fifth year later this month, several top Russian officers have been killed, with Moscow accusing Kiev. Ukraine has taken responsibility in some cases.

Most recently, a senior Russian military official, Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, was killed in a car explosion in Moscow in December.

In a rare assessment of battlefield casualties, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a French television network on Wednesday that 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died since Moscow launched its special operation in February 2022.

Also on Wednesday, Peskov asserted that Russian troops would continue to fight the war until Kiev made the right “decisions” required to end the conflict.

The Kremlin says that Ukraine must pull all its troops out of the Russian-speaking Donbas region as a condition to end the war.

Despite US President Donald Trump's agreement to concede the Russian-speaking Ukrainian territory to Moscow, Kiev has refused so far, rejecting any unilateral pullback of its forces from territory it still controls.

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