On Monday, around 7 a.m. local time, the car of General Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the Directorate of Operational Training for the Russian Chief of Staff, exploded in the south of Moscow as he was heading to work. His wife witnessed the explosion. Sarvarov died from his severe injuries shortly thereafter, in a hospital. It is the third assassination of a high-ranking Russian general within the past year.
Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the murder and have stressed that they suspect the Ukrainian military of being behind it. Russian press reports suggest that the prosecution will likely reclassify the case as one of terrorism.
Born in 1969, Sarvarov was a highly experienced general. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he fought in the Kremlin’s wars in the North Caucasus, including the two bloody wars in Chechnya. In 2015-2016, he was centrally involved in Russia’s military operations in Syria that were aimed at propping up the Assad regime against various US-backed Islamist militias. His position as head of the Directorate of Operational Training for the Russian Chief of Staff was consequential for the course of the war in Ukraine, as it included preparing generals for combat operations and developing military tactics and strategies.
One pro-Kremlin military analyst told the Russian Bizness-Gazeta, “Why was he singled out [for assassination]? Because he was one of the key figures [in the military]. In fact, it is sad that the enemy has the ability to find and liquidate officers at this level. It is extremely difficult to replace someone like him, these are singular figures.”
Not least because of the embarrassment caused by such repeated assassinations of high-ranking military leaders, news coverage of the bombing has subsided quickly in Russia.
But there can be little doubt that the assassination was, indeed, the work of Ukrainian intelligence, working closely with the imperialist powers. Ever since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, assassinations and terrorist attacks of this kind have been a key component of the war strategy of Ukraine and NATO against Russia. These included the assassination of the far-right pundit Daria Dugina in 2022 and pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April 2023, of the Black Sea submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky in July 2023, and the assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov in December 2024. At the time, Kirillov was the head of Russia’s nuclear, chemical and biological defense forces. Most of these assassinations took place through car and other vehicle bombings, similar to Monday’s. Yet another such bombing killed Major General Yaroslav Moskalik in April; he was the deputy head of the main operations directorate of Russia’s General Staff.
This strategy of destabilizing Russia’s armed forces and the domestic situation more broadly has also involved the 2024 bombing of Moscow Crocus City Hall, in which 143 people were killed, and several incursions into Russian territory, most notably of the Kursk region.
Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence, has been the central figure overseeing such operations. He is notorious for his admiration for Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera and his ties to the far right. He has also been repeatedly photographed with a map of a partitioned Russia hanging in his office.
The aim of this strategy is to weaken Russia militarily and politically, not least by embarrassing the Putin regime, and to thus foment discontent within the ranks of the state apparatus, the military elites and among the oligarchs. The ultimate goal is to bring about a regime change so as to facilitate direct control by the imperialist powers over the resources of the entire region of the former Soviet Union.
Sarvarov’s assassination took place amidst the ongoing negotiations between Russia and the US over a potential peace deal. With the negotiations currently in limbo, the Russian army continues to make slow advances in Ukraine. Meanwhile, however, Ukraine has been significantly intensifying its drone war on Russian territory. Every day, Russian regions, including in the country’s central part, are targeted by dozens, sometimes hundreds of Ukrainian drones. The primary target has been Russia’s energy infrastructure, especially oil refineries and pipelines, but residential areas have also been targeted.
In November, the Kremlin-controlled outlet Izvestiia reported that in the first ten months of this year no less than 392 Russian civilians had been killed in drone strikes, among them 22 children and teenagers. 3,205 people were wounded. Between July and September, the number of drone strikes increased by a third. Russian authorities are now warning civilians against touching any Ukrainian drones they might find, since they are allegedly equipped with explosives that are designed to go off upon human touch. In the pro-NATO press, these civilian victims of the war have received no coverage and attention.
Most recently, Ukrainian drones have also targeted commercial vessels in the Black Sea. A comment in the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta on December 14 argued that the European powers have been providing the necessary intelligence for those drone strikes, especially on commercial vessels and energy infrastructure, so as to undermine the US-Russian negotiations over a peace deal.