Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, first deputy head of Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU), was shot three times in the back outside his apartment in northwest Moscow on February 6 and remains in a critical condition in intensive care, Gazeta.ru reported.

The attacker waited on the 25th floor stairwell of a residential building on Volokolamsk Highway and fired as Alekseev emerged from his apartment on the floor below, according to the Telegram channel SHOT. Bullets struck vital organs and the general was taken to hospital by ambulance after neighbours heard the shots and called for help.

"I heard a shot and screams of 'help'. I came out and he was lying in blood. A neighbour was shouting, 'Call an ambulance, it's a gunshot wound,'" one witness said, as quoted by the Telegram channel Ostorozhno, Novosti.

Russia's Investigative Committee opened two criminal cases covering attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms. Investigators are reviewing surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses, though residents of the building had previously complained about non-functioning cameras.

The suspect remains at large, and investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the shooter may have been a woman.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin was receiving all information about the investigation. "We wish the general first to survive and to recover. We hope that will happen," Peskov said at a briefing.

Alekseev is a Hero of Russia and the deputy to GRU chief Admiral Igor Kostyukov, who is currently leading the Russian delegation at trilateral negotiations between Russia, the United States and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian publication Strana.ua suggested the attack could affect the course of those peace negotiations. Aleksei Zhuravlev, first deputy head of the State Duma's defence committee, told the outlet Podyom that the assassination attempt was in the interests of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and called for the elimination of everyone involved "up to the head of the Kyiv regime himself."

The shooting is the fourth attack on senior Russian military figures in Moscow and the Moscow region in just over a year. Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's radiological, chemical and biological defence forces, was killed by a car bomb in Moscow on December 17, 2024.

Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the General Staff's main operations directorate, died in a car explosion in the Moscow suburb of Balashikha on April 25, 2025. Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the General Staff's operational training directorate, was killed by a car bomb in Moscow's Orekhovo-Borisovo district on December 22, 2025.