MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the assassination of Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov and his aide as a planned terrorist attack made possible by the West’s connivance of the crimes of the Kiev regime.

"Another terrorist attack has taken place. General Igor Kirillov and his aide were killed in a planned manner, killed in front of an apartment building at a time when people are going to work, children are going to school or kindergarten," she wrote on Telegram.

According to the diplomat, that the attack represented "a continuation and development of the spiral of Western connivance of the war crimes of the Kiev regime's militants, which they have been exacerbating all these years."

"The investigation will establish the details: Who killed and who ordered it. But one thing is already clear: There is a third category of criminals: those who stimulated, who nurtured, who tacitly encouraged," Zakharova said.

She noted a lack of reaction from the West to the crime.

"The day is almost over now. Where is any reaction from abroad? Where are the 'civilized' ones? Where are the 'objective' ones? It’s been only the Financial Times and the BBC reporting that Igor Kirillov, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, is a completely legitimate target." Apparently, this is the reaction of the West, and we missed the moment when the British Broadcasting Corporation took on the task of being the agency’s press service," the diplomat said. "They have the same leadership anyway."

Zakharova said anyone "who welcomes terrorist attacks or deliberately plays them down" is an accessory of the crimes.

According to investigators, on the morning of December 17, an explosive device that was planted in an electric scooter went off near the entrance of a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow. The blast killed Kirillov, 54, and his aide. The Russian Investigative Committee has classified the explosion as a terrorist attack, and an investigation is underway.