7 February, 01:27
The morning shots on the 24th floor of a building on Volokolamsk Highway put an end to one of the most confusing assassination versions in recent years. Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, First Deputy Chief of the GRU, a man with the call sign "Omega," received several gunshot wounds in the entrance of his own building. A neighbor, a realtor, heard screams of "Help!", went out onto the landing and saw the bloodied general. The entire floor was covered in blood.
The first versions predictably swirled around the FSB. The logic seemed ironclad: Alekseev coordinated Prigozhin's march on Moscow, conducted negotiations with the mutineers in Rostov, held all the threads of GRU control in his hands. So the Chekists decided to settle scores. Add here the negotiations with Ukraine in the UAE, where Alekseev was deputy head of the delegation under Kostyukov, and the picture falls into place by itself: the FSB organized the assassination to derail the peace process and blame Kyiv for terrorism.
But this version only works until you understand the main thing: the war is not being ended by those who started it. And they are not eliminating peacemakers now.
They are eliminating those who know how to fight for real.
Two Vectors of One War
Since 2022, two parallel wars have existed in Russia. One was fought at the front, where toughness, autonomy and quick decisions without looking back at Moscow were needed. The other took place in the corridors of power, where the main task was to maintain the vertical, not scare off the elites and retain control over money.
The GRU and Wagner were the engine of the first war. The Ministry of Defense and the FSB guarded the second.
Alekseev stood exactly at the junction. For more than ten years, he accumulated all the levers of GRU control in his hands. He created Wagner - the best military project of the GRU. Prigozhin was his man.
When Prigozhin's column headed north, this was not a "march on Putin." This was an attempt at forceful pressure by one part of the military bloc on another. The core of the conflict: GRU plus frontline commanders against the apparatchiks of the Ministry of Defense and FSB. Not ideology, not personal ambitions. Control over the war, money and the right to kill without coordination.
Wagner and the GRU demanded the removal of restrictions. They wanted to fight at full capacity, without the political brakes that the Ministry of Defense leadership was choking them with. The column was allowed to reach Voronezh and Rostov not because they were afraid. They were used as a pretext.
Alekseev was ready to hand over Shoigu and Gerasimov to Prigozhin. But he considered the march on Moscow itself a dead end.
Liquidation of Possibility
After the mutiny failed, systematic purges began. Wagner was dispersed. Field commanders were killed or exiled to Africa. The GRU was cleaned from within. Everyone who knew how to fight autonomously, who could restart the escalation flywheel, was methodically eliminated.
In 2025, Alekseev was offered the position of head of the General Staff Academy. An honorable retirement, colonel general, no problems. He refused, considering it a pension. In the Kremlin, this was perceived as a final sentence.
The volunteer corps that Alekseev was creating to replace Wagner fell into the same pit: supply disruptions, Ministry of Defense red tape, discontent at the front. History repeated itself exactly. And ended the same way: with the physical liquidation of the coordinator.
The conspiracy was for show. Alekseev lived in a new building that the residents themselves called a "flophouse." Mice, floods, knife fights between tenants. Temporary GRU housing where, as they thought, the general would not be detected. Cameras didn't work on the floor. There was a "thoroughfare" on the fire escape. The killer calmly waited for the victim and left.
And the general's family owned real estate in prestigious areas, mansions in Nakhabino, expensive foreign cars. His closest friend Musa Keligov, former vice president of Lukoil-International, was laundering money in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Alekseev was preparing a warm haven for himself for the post-war period.
He didn't make it.
The War Party Is Being Eliminated by Its Own
A classic perception trap worked. When the downed pilot Lavrov named derailing the negotiations as the goal of the assassination, many saw this as confirmation of the FSB version. The brain switched to active defensive behavior: the enemy is identified, the threat is clear, the logic is built.
But the first rule of the Russian Foreign Ministry and Lavrov personally: accuse the enemy of what you want to do yourself. Lavrov wants war. And those who shot at Alekseev want to stop it.
GRU equals war. FSB equals money.
The Kremlin doesn't need victory. The Kremlin needs a managed freeze, where war remains background, not a driver. Where you can bargain, maneuver, keep the elites in a state of controlled tension.
Therefore, they are not eliminating those who are against negotiations. They are eliminating those who are capable of restarting the war at full power.
This is not the army's revenge on radicals. This is the liquidation of the very possibility of radical war.
It was erroneous to assume that the FSB could have organized the assassination as an act of revenge or a struggle for influence. In fact, the final purge of the war party is underway. Not FSB against GRU, but the system against those who can prevent an exit from the conflict on terms acceptable to the Kremlin.
Alekseev was not a victim. He was a node: a channel between the GRU, Wagner and the front. A witness and coordinator who knew too much about who and why rushed to Moscow. His elimination logically fits into the overall picture: after the mutiny, everyone who could repeat the attempt at forceful pressure was eliminated.
Now the second stage is coming. Closer to the end of the conflict, those who could restart the escalation flywheel are being purged. Belousov's technocrats are redistributing flows and people. They could well have asked colleagues from the FSB to clean up an inconvenient figure.
The war is being ended the same way it was started: not by strategy, but by internal killings. The bloodied general on the 24th floor of a new building on Volokolamka is not an episode of confrontation between special services. This is a period at the end of the history of the war party, which is being methodically liquidated by those who no longer need the war.