Blast Kills Three in Moscow Near Site of General’s Car Bombing

Two police officers died in the explosion, the authorities said. Earlier this week a car bomb killed a military commander in the same area of Russia’s capital.A police officer blocking the road near the site of a blast in Moscow on Wednesday.Credit...Ramil Sitdikov/ReutersDec. 24, 2025, 5:28 a.m. ETThree people, including two police officers, were killed on Wednesday by a bomb in Moscow after the officers tried to apprehend a person acting suspiciously near a police car, Russian investigators said.The blast occurred next to a police station in the same southern Moscow neighborhood where a senior Russian military commander was killed on Monday by a bomb placed under his car. The commander, Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, was killed about 1,000 feet away from the site of Wednesday’s blast.Russian investigators have said that they were looking into whether the commander’s killing had been orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services. Investigators made no reference to Ukraine in their statements about the bombing on Wednesday.Moscow traffic police identified the officers who were killed on Wednesday as Ilya Klimanov, 24, and Maksim Gorbunov, 25.Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement that the officers had “spotted a suspicious person” next to a police car early on Wednesday morning. The statement did not provide details about what the person was doing and why it had caught the officers’ attention.A bomb went off when the officers approached the person to apprehend him, the statement said. It was not immediately clear whether the blast’s third victim was that person.Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, several high-profile figures, including military commanders and vocal supporters of the war, have been killed in targeted assassinations claimed by the Ukrainian special services.Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, the commander was killed on Monday in the same area, served as the head of the Russian General Staff’s army operational training directorate. In Russia, law enforcement officers and military commanders often live in the same buildings or neighborhoods, in apartments distributed by their employers.Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus, and Central Asia.SKIP Site IndexNewsHome PageU.S.WorldPoliticsNew YorkEducationSportsBusinessTechScienceWeatherThe Great ReadObituariesHeadwayVisual InvestigationsThe MagazineArtsBook ReviewBest Sellers Book ListDanceMoviesMusicPop CultureTelevisionTheaterVisual ArtsLifestyleHealthWellFoodRestaurant ReviewsLoveTravelStyleFashionReal EstateT MagazineOpinionToday's OpinionColumnistsEditorialsGuest EssaysOp-DocsLettersSunday OpinionOpinion VideoOpinion AudioMoreAudioGamesCookingWirecutterThe AthleticJobsVideoGraphicsTrendingLive EventsCorrectionsReader CenterTimesMachineThe Learning NetworkSchool of The NYTinEducationAccountSubscribeManage My AccountHome DeliveryGift SubscriptionsGroup SubscriptionsGift ArticlesEmail NewslettersNYT LicensingReplica EditionTimes Store