A car bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow on Monday morning, December 22, the latest high-profile army figure to be blown up in a blast that came just hours after Russian and Ukrainian delegates held separate talks in Miami on a plan to end the war.

Kyiv has not commented on the incident, but Russian investigators said they were probing whether the blast was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces.” The attack was similar to other assassinations of generals and pro-war figures that have either been claimed, or are widely believed to have been orchestrated, by Ukraine.

Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head of the Russian General Staff’s training department, was killed when the bomb, which had been placed under his parked car, detonated in a residential quarter of southern Moscow.

AFP reporters at the scene saw a mangled white Kia SUV, its doors and back window blown out. The frame was twisted and charred from the blast. The scene had been cordoned off by security forces, and investigators were sifting through the debris. Eyewitnesses reported a loud bang.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it was “working through various lines of enquiry into the murder. One of them involves the possible organization of the crime by Ukrainian special services.”

Sarvarov fought in the Russian army’s campaigns in the North Caucasus, including Chechnya in the 1990s, according to his official biography on the defense ministry’s website. He also commanded Russian forces in Syria in 2015-16.

Talks intensify

The Kremlin said Putin had been informed about Monday’s killing, which came after three days of talks in Miami as the United States intensifies its efforts to broker an end to the four-year war.

Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and US special envoy Steve Witkoff hailed “progress” in the negotiations on Sunday. Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev also met with the US team, which included Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Witkoff had also called those meetings “productive and constructive.”

An initial 28-point plan to end the war put forward by US President Donald Trump adhered to Moscow’s core demands, triggering panic in Kyiv and European capitals. Ukraine and its allies have since been working to refine the plan, though Kyiv says it is still being asked to make massive concessions, such as giving up the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed skepticism over whether Russia really wants to end the war, which has killed tens of thousands and decimated eastern and southern Ukraine.

The Kremlin on Monday also denied that it wanted to recreate the Soviet Union, seize the whole of Ukraine and more land in eastern Europe after Reuters reported that US intelligence had concluded Putin seeks much more than just control over eastern Ukraine.

Since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv has been blamed for several attacks targeting Russian military officials and pro-Kremlin figures in Russia and in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

A car blast near Moscow in April killed General Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy of the General Staff. In December 2024, Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, was killed when a booby-trapped electric scooter exploded in Moscow, an attack claimed by Ukraine’s SBU security service.

A Russian military blogger, Maxim Fomin, was killed when a statuette exploded in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023. And in August 2022, a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin.