Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov – who was chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops – was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt, which starts a road some 7km southeast of the Kremlin.

“Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection forces of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, and his assistant were killed,” the investigative committee said.

Photographs posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a shattered entrance to a building littered with rubble and two bodies lying in the blood-stained snow.

Reuters footage from the scene showed a police cordon. A criminal case has been opened.

Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defence troops, known as RKhBZ, are special forces who operate under conditions of radioactive, chemical and biological contamination.

On Monday, Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kirillov in absentia with the alleged use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, the security service of Ukraine said, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Russia denies those accusations.

The UK in October sanctioned Kirillov and the nuclear protection forces for using riot control agents and multiple reports of the use of the toxic choking agent chloropicrin on the battlefield.