Yaroslav Moskalik, a senior Russian military official, dies in a suspected targeted explosion as U.S. envoy meets with President Putin.
A senior Russian general lost his life in a car bombing in a Moscow suburb on Friday morning. Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy chief of the Russian army’s main operations directorate, died in the blast that occurred around 11 a.m. on Nesterov Boulevard in Moscow’s Balashikha district, according to the Russian Investigative Committee.
The explosion was caused by a homemade explosive device packed with shrapnel, the committee said in an official statement. While the perpetrators have not been identified, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency has previously been linked to similar attacks targeting prominent Russian military figures inside Russia. 
Footage circulated on Telegram showed a Volkswagen vehicle engulfed in flames near a residential building. Additional video published by Izvestia captured the moment of the explosion, with debris from the car flying through the air after a man approached the parked vehicle.
According to Russian media outlet Baza, the bomb had been attached to a stationary car and was detonated remotely as Moskalik, who lived in the area, walked by. A second fatality has also been reported, Kommersant newspaper noted.
Investigators believe the Volkswagen was registered to a man from Sumy, a Ukrainian city near the Russian border, and had only recently been purchased.
Lieutenant General Moskalik played a key role in planning Russian military operations. He also took part in high-level international negotiations, including the 2015 Normandy Format meeting involving representatives from Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and France to discuss the Minsk agreements aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
During those talks, Moskalik represented the Russian military alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and top adviser Yuri Ushakov. Ushakov took part in important discussions on Friday with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian news outlet RBC previously listed Moskalik as a member of the security subgroup during the Minsk negotiations.
