A Russian general charged by Kyiv over the 2024 missile strike on Ukraine's main children's hospital has been shot and badly wounded in the Saratov region.

Major General Nikolai Varpakhovich, who commands the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division based at the Engels-2 airbase, was hit twice at close range by a gunman on a motorbike in the village of Probuzhdeniye, in the Engels district, on September 3. One bullet struck his face and the other his torso. He was taken to hospital in serious condition and then airlifted to Moscow.

The destruction of the hospital was a major scandal at the time, which had “Children” painted on the ground on either side in letters large enough to easily be seen from the air, but was targeted anyway. Hundreds of familities had taken refuge in the building to escape the intense bombing of the city and dozens perished in the blast.

This is the latest in a string of revenge assassinations against military figures on Russian soil that has been laid at the feet of Ukraine’s special services. Russia's Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case into attempted murder and arms trafficking but has not identified him, and the defence ministry has not commented, The Moscow Times reported on September 3. Ukraine has said nothing about the shooting.

The channel Dosye Shpiona put the attack at about 07:00 outside a private house and said the gunman had not been detained, Kyiv Post reported, adding that it could not independently verify the account.

The killing came only days after Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) formally named him a suspect in a war-crimes case. Nobody has claimed the attack, and no Russian official has publicly connected it to Kyiv. Bankova never comments on assassinations on Russian territory as a matter of routine.

The SBU charged Varpakhovich in absentia over the July 8, 2024 strike on the Okhmatdyt national specialist children's hospital in Kyiv. Investigators say he issued the combat order and coordinated the attack, in which a Kh-101 cruise missile launched from a Tu-95MS bomber hit the hospital, killing two people including a doctor and injuring more than 30, nine of them children. More than 600 patients were inside at the time. The missile destroyed the toxicology building and damaged four others where children were undergoing surgery and cancer treatment.

Ukrainian investigators have also charged him over the June 13, 2023 Kh-101 strike on Kryvyi Rih, which killed 13 civilians and injured more than 30, damaging blocks of flats, schools, a food warehouse and private businesses, and over the April 23, 2022 strike on a 16-storey block in Odesa, in which eight civilians died, among them a three-month-old girl, and 18 were wounded.

Major General Sergei Kuvaldin, then first deputy commander and chief of staff of Russia's long-range aviation, was identified earlier as another officer suspected of organising the Okhmatdyt strike.

Varpakhovich's division flies the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers of Russia's long-range aviation, the aircraft that carry the Kh-101 cruise missiles fired at Ukrainian cities, and it sits inside an expanding missile arsenal that Ukraine's air defences have struggled to keep pace with.