A top Russian Lieutenant has been left fighting for his life after being shot outside his home in Moscow.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, 64, survived the assassination attempt despite being shot multiple times as he left his home.
The attacker fled the scene, the Kremlin said, sparking an urgent manhunt.
The General is said to be in a serious condition following the shooting.
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Alexeyev is deputy head of Vladimir Putin’s feared GRU military intelligence service, which stands for Main Intelligence Directorate.
He was shot several times when leaving his 24th-floor apartment, located on Volokolamsk Highway, at around 7.00am local time.
"I heard a gunshot and cries of ‘help'," one bystander recalled.
"I went out and he was lying there covered in blood, and a neighbour was screaming, 'Call an ambulance, he’s got a gunshot wound'."
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev has been left fighting for his life after being shot outside his home in Moscow
|REUTERS
Emergency services then rushed to the scene and took him to hospital.
Alexeyev is a close ally of Putin and gathers intelligence and data for missile strikes on Ukraine.
He has been awarded a Hero of the Russian Federation for "courage and heroism demonstrated in the performance of military duty".
The 64-year-old is also seen as one of the founders of the notorious Wagner private army, and the recently disbanded Espanyola brigade, mainly made up of Russian football hooligans.
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Emergency services rushed to the scene at around 7am local time
|REUTERS
Alexeyev had earlier been placed under European Union sanctions after the GRU was accused of being behind the deadly 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury in the UK.
Svetlana Petrenko of Russia's Investigations Committee said: "The victim has been hospitalised at one of the city's hospitals."
She added that a criminal case for attempted murder has been opened.
Ukrainian forces have carried out several assassinations of Putin's top advisors and officials since the war started in 2022.
An urgent manhunt has been launched, with Russian authorities refusing to rule out an internal assassination attempt
|REUTERS
Just last month, Russian intelligence officials claimed they had thwarted an attempted attack on a Russian soldier in St Petersburg.
In December 2025, another high-ranking GRU officer, Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, was killed when an explosive device detonated under a car in Moscow.
He was in charge of the armed force's operational training department, according to Russia's investigative committee.
However, Russian authorities are not ruling out the possibility the attempted hit was actually internal.
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