A car bomb attack in downtown Moscow claimed the lives of three people on the night of this Saturday. According to several local media, the target of the attack was to kill a high-ranking officer of the Russian army, who apparently was not hit.
According to the Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the explosion (equivalent to one kilogram of TNT) occurred around 8:00 p.m. in Kudrinskaya Square, near an Italian restaurant located in one of the seven Stalinist towers of the Russian capital.
An unidentified woman tried to enter the venue with a homemade bomb
The perpetrator of the attack was a woman not yet identified who tried to enter the establishment with a homemade bomb. When one of the security guards prevented her entry, the device exploded. Both the attacker and this guard died instantly. The other deceased was a customer of the Balzi Rossi restaurant.
Additionally, 21 people were injured with varying degrees of severity, according to the police. The state agency RIA Novosti released a video showing heavily armed police officers at the scene of the attack. The crime scene was cordoned off and access was restricted.
Traffic was also temporarily cut off on several nearby streets, and municipal authorities had to reschedule a nighttime cycling festival that passed through the city center.
According to local Telegram channels, the target of the failed attack was the commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Alexander Chaiko, who was reportedly celebrating at this exclusive Moscow restaurant that he had turned 55 on July 27.
The VChK-OGPU channel claims that high-ranking officials from the Russian Security Service (FSB), generals from the Ministry of Defense, parliamentarians, and government officials attended the celebration.
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During the war, Ukraine has targeted high-ranking Russian military officials in Moscow
During the nearly four and a half years of war with Ukraine, several attacks against high-ranking officers and generals of the Russian army have occurred in the Russian capital. Moscow has blamed Ukrainian intelligence, which in turn has claimed responsibility for several of them.
Among recent attacks, last February a gunman tried to kill Russian Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. And in December 2025, the chief of operations of the General Staff, General Fanil Sarvarov, died after a bomb exploded under his vehicle. The FSB said it would increase protection for high-ranking military personnel.
According to the online newspaper Meduza, at the start of the war Chaiko was the commander of the troops of the Eastern Military District, accused of committing war crimes in 2022 in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
The newspaper Kommersant suggests that the woman carrying the bomb to the restaurant might not have known it was an explosive device. According to their version, the device was detonated remotely.
Not only military personnel have been targets of Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil. In August 2022, a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, daughter of the ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. In April 2023, Russian military blogger Maxim Fomin died when a device camouflaged in a statue given to him during an event at a café in Saint Petersburg exploded.
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