A senior Russian military intelligence official was shot in Moscow early Friday and taken to hospital, authorities said, marking the latest attack targeting the country’s top military leadership.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, a deputy chief of military intelligence, was shot multiple times inside a residential building in the northwest of the capital. The assailant fled the scene, and investigators have opened a criminal case.

Officials said detectives are interviewing witnesses and reviewing surveillance footage. No details were provided about Alekseyev’s condition or about who may be responsible for the shooting.

The incident came a day after trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi involving the United States, Ukraine and Russia, whose delegation was led by the head of military intelligence, Adm. Igor Kostyukov. Following those talks, Washington and Moscow announced plans to resume high-level military-to-military dialogue that had been suspended since 2021.

Alekseyev’s shooting is the latest in a series of attacks on senior Russian military figures, many of which Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Just over a month ago, Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov was killed when a bomb exploded beneath his car in Moscow. In April, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik died in a similar car bombing in the Moscow region, which the Kremlin also attributed to Ukraine. In December 2024, Ukraine’s security service claimed responsibility for killing Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s chemical, radiological and biological weapons unit.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was being briefed on Friday’s shooting. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that senior military officials face heightened risks amid the war in Ukraine, adding that their protection is the responsibility of security services.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested the shooting was a “terrorist act” aimed at undermining peace talks, though Kyiv did not immediately comment.

Alekseyev, 64, played a visible role during the brief mutiny led by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the summer of 2023, when he was filmed speaking with Prigozhin and later released a video denouncing the uprising as an attempted coup. He received the Hero of Russia award in 2017, according to state media.

He has been under international sanctions for years. The European Union sanctioned Alekseyev in 2019 over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom, an attack a U.K. inquiry said was ordered by the Kremlin and carried out by military intelligence. The United States also sanctioned Alekseyev in 2016 and 2018 for his alleged role in cyberattacks.