Zelenskiy praises killing of top Russian military figures

(Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised Ukraine's foreign intelligence service on Monday for the killing of top Russian military figures since the start of the war, but made no mention of a car bomb that killed a senior Russian officer last week.

The Kremlin has blamed Ukraine for last Friday's car bomb outside Moscow that killed Yaroslav Moskalik, 59, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

Authorities in Kyiv have made no direct comment on the attack on Moskalik, the latest in a series of Russian military officers and pro-war figures killed since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Zelenskiy's remarks, on the Telegram messaging app, made no reference to any specific instance of Russian military officers being killed.

"The head of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence reported on the liquidation of persons from the top command of the Russian armed forces. Justice inevitably is done," Zelenskiy said, referring to the agency's head, Oleg Ivashchenko.

"The head reported on further measures to counter Russian agent networks in Ukraine and saboteurs. Good results. Thank you for your work," the president said.

Ukraine's SBU intelligence service said it killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, a top Russian general accused by Ukraine of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, last December in Moscow.

A Moscow court at the weekend ordered a Ukrainian national facing terrorism charges in connection with the attack on Moskalik to be remanded in custody.

A Moskalik obituary published on Tuesday in the Russian defence ministry's official newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda and signed by Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, his deputies and top army commanders, described Moskalik as a "loyal son" of Russia.

It said that since the start of the war, which the obituary in line with the Kremlin's stance called "a special military operation", Moskalik supervised the works of the General Staff's combat control group. It did not provide details on what that position involved.

According to the obituary, from 2015 to 2021 Moskalik was involved in Russian defence ministry's international delegations working on issues relating to southeastern Ukraine. He was "responsible for preparing materials for the Russian president on the situation in southeastern Ukraine", the obituary said.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski, Oleksandr Kozhukhar and Lidia Kelly;Writing by Ron Popeski and Lidia Kelly; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Michael Perry)