The truth is the last thing that emerges in the games between intelligence agencies. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) accuses Ukrainian and Polish espionage of the attempted assassination last Friday of the second in command of the. kyiv denies this after not having been so emphatic following the assassinations of three other Russian generals. Meanwhile, one of the detained suspects worked for a military company connected to the FSB, although Russian espionage has only mentioned his alleged membership of the FSB. Truths and lies around an attack that, for the moment, has placed the Kremlin in a delicate position due to the ease with which its generals are attacked.
Alexéyev, lieutenant general and first deputy chief of the General Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU), was shot at around seven in the morning on February 6 in the lobby of the building where he lives on Volokolamsk Avenue in Moscow. The commander saw the attacker approaching near the elevator and struggled with him. In their struggle he fired three shots, one in the trunk and two in his extremities.
The security cameras recorded everything. The gunman left the block on his own and threw the gun into a snowdrift before boarding a bus, while Alexeyev was taken to a hospital in very serious condition. The soldier came out of a coma the next day.
Alexéyev is a controversial figure. On the one hand, for his role in the creation of and its subsequent dismantling after the failed mutiny of the mercenary group in 2023. The Russian general was one of those suspected of supporting the coup.
On the other hand, as head of the GRU, he has been responsible for supervising the actions of unit 29155, accused by the West of organizing an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and numerous attacks and sabotage in Europe, some with victims, such as the poisoning of the Skripals in 2018 and the blowing up of an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic in 2014.
On Sunday, the FSB announced the arrest in Dubai of the alleged attacker, Liubomir Korba, of Russian citizenship and born in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil (Soviet Union, 1960), and the arrest in Moscow of an accomplice, Viktor Vasin, a Russian citizen born in 1959. According to the intelligence agency, a third assistant, Zinaida Serebritskaya, a Russian born in 1971, fled to Ukraine after renting another house in the block to give the key to the attacker.
Despite failing to protect their general, Russian espionage has been quicker to determine not only the identity of the attackers, but also that Korba’s son, Lubosz Korba, a 27-year-old Polish citizen who supposedly lives in Katowice, collaborated in the recruitment of his father along with the Polish spy service. Warsaw has not commented on this accusation.
The FSB on Monday published the alleged confessions of Vasin and Korba following their extradition to Russia. According to the intelligence service, Vasin and the alleged gunman were recruited by Ukraine in August 2025, where the latter received training in weapons and the use of Zoom video calls. According to Moscow, kyiv promised Korba a payment of $30,000 for killing General Alexeyev.
Russian espionage claims that Korba arrived in Moscow by flying through Moldova and Georgia. According to the FSB version, he spied on Russian soldiers for a time before picking up a pistol with a silencer in a hiding place and receiving the keys from Serebritskaya.
The FSB has accused Vasin of having participated in protests against the Kremlin, of having supported the leader of the Communist Left Front, after his imprisonment; and be a supporter of the Anti-Corruption Foundation [FBK] of the dissident Alexéi Navalni, who died in prison in 2024 – the organization claims that two Western laboratories have proven his poisoning -.
However, the FSB has overlooked Vasin’s alleged links to the intelligence agency itself.
“Script twist,” proclaimed this Sunday researcher Christo Grozev, also persecuted by Russian intelligence. “Vasin works for an FSB company that makes surveillance tools,” the head of the Bellingcat research platform announced on X.
“Víktor Vasin was employed at least until August 2025 as chief expert at NTC Atlas, promoted by the FSB and now part of the war-industrial giant Rostec,” added Grozev, who showed a resume of the detainee from 2014 in which he boasts of his “mastery in military issues.”
Vasin indicated on his resume that he had been chief of staff of a regiment and head of a satellite communications station. These positions require the military rank of lieutenant colonel, according to the independent Russian media. Vazhnie Istorii.
The investigation into Vasin has also revealed that his son was also an officer in the Russian Armed Forces, where he worked for years under contract in the area of telecommunications.
The FSB has not commented on any of the alleged attacker’s links to Russian intelligence agencies. And the Kremlin has also shown caution.
Negotiations with kyiv
Alexéyev’s superior, Igor Kostiukóv, leads the Russian negotiating team currently carrying out talks with Ukraine. Although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused kyiv of trying to disrupt the negotiation process, Moscow has not yet sent any signal that this attack may have broken the dialogue.
Putin’s spokesman, , has only wished Alexéyev a speedy recovery and has avoided commenting on a question that echoes within the walls of the Kremlin after the fourth assassination attempt on a Russian general in 13 months. “It is not for the Kremlin to discuss how to ensure their security. That is a matter for the security services,” Peskov said.
The point is that Putin is once again approaching a crossroads and has to make a decision. with an increasingly pressing economic crisis and the prospect of victory increasingly distant. Another, the most ultranationalist, would consider it a betrayal to make concessions to kyiv. And the latter does not understand the ease of the attack against a Russian general, precisely the head of unit 29155 of the GRU.
