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Russia Says it Detained Suspect over Murder of Top General in Moscow

Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Russia Says it Detained Suspect over Murder of Top General in Moscow

Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Russia said on Wednesday it had detained a citizen of Uzbekistan who had confessed to planting and detonating a bomb which killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov in Moscow a day earlier on the instructions of Ukraine's security service.
Kirillov, who was chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside his apartment building along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter went off.
He was the most senior Russian military officer to be assassinated inside Russia by Ukraine. Ukraine's SBU intelligence service, which accused Kirillov of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, something Moscow denies, took responsibility for the killing.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said in a statement on Wednesday that the unnamed suspect had told them he had come to Moscow to carry out an assignment for Ukraine's intelligence services.
In a video of the confession published by the Baza news outlet, which is known to have sources in Russian law enforcement circles, the suspect is seen sitting in a van describing his actions.
It was not clear what conditions he was speaking in and Reuters could not immediately verify the video's authenticity.
Dressed in a winter coat, the suspect is shown saying he had come to Moscow at the orders of Ukraine's intelligence services, bought an electric scooter, and then received an improvised explosive device to carry out the hit months later.
He describes how he had placed the device on the electric scooter which he had parked outside the entrance of the apartment block where Kirillov lived.
Investigators cited him as saying that he had set up a surveillance camera in a hire car nearby and that the organizers of the assassination, who he was cited as saying had been based in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, had used the camera to watch what was going on.
In the video, the suspect, who was born in 1995, is shown saying that he had remotely detonated the device once Kirillov had left the building.
He says Ukraine had offered him $100,000 for his role in the murder and residency in a European country.
Investigators said they were identifying other people involved in the hit and the daily Kommersant newspaper reported that one other suspect had been detained. Reuters could not independently confirm that.

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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.