The Russian security council deputy head, Dmitry Medvedev, has described the editors of the Times newspaper in Britain as “legitimate military targets” in response to the newspaper’s coverage of the assassination of a Russian general.
Medvedev’s vitriolic comments on Wednesday followed a Times editorial in which the newspaper described the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov as “a legitimate act of defence” by Ukraine, which has claimed responsibility for the killing.
Kirillov, head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, was killed along with his assistant when a device attached to an escooter exploded as the two men left a building in a residential area in south-east Moscow on Tuesday morning. Kirillov is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in an assassination away from the frontlines since the start of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nearly three years ago.
