The Investigative Committee on Friday said that an explosive device ripped through a parked car near Moscow and killed a senior Russian general, adding it had launched a murder probe.

Authorities named General-lieutenant Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the main operational directorate of the military’s General Staff, as the victim.

Investigators said they had opened a probe into murder and smuggling explosives after the Volkswagen Golf blew up outside a block of flats in the town of Balashikha, east of Moscow. Images from the scene posted on social media showed a blaze that gutted a car.

The Agentstvo investigative news site, citing leaked information, said Moskalik lived in Balashikha, but the Volkswagen was not registered to him.

Security camera footage posted by the Izvestia newspaper showed a massive explosion, sending fragments flying into the air. The blast happens just as someone can be seen walking towards the car.

The “blast was caused by the triggering of an improvised explosive device” packed with metal fragments designed to cause maximum harm, investigators said.

According to the Kremlin website, Moskalik was a Russian military representative at the “Normandy format” talks on Ukraine in 2015, amid the conflict between Kyiv and Russian-backed separatists. Russian President Vladimir Putin made him general lieutenant in 2021.

The blast appeared to be similar to previous attacks on Russians linked to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

Kyiv had in some cases claimed responsibility but has not commented on Friday’s attack.

These include the August 2022 car bombing of nationalist Darya Dugina and an explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023 that killed high-profile military correspondent Maxim Fomin, known as Vladlen Tatarsky.

Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow in December, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.

After Kirillov’s killing, Putin made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies, saying: “We must not allow such very serious blunders to happen.”