Russia’s Investigative Committee says it is looking into whether Ukraine intelligence services were behind attack

A Russian general has been killed after an explosive device detonated beneath his car in what Moscow described as a likely assassination carried out by Ukrainian intelligence services.

Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian armed forces’ general staff, died of his injuries, a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Reportedly critical drone strike is first in Mediterranean since full-scale invasion began as maritime conflict grows

• ‘There are hundreds’: tracking Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers

Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

Friday’s strike off the coast of Libya, which reportedly caused critical damage, took place on the day of Vladimir Putin’s annual end of year press conference in which he said Russia would respond to recent Ukrainian attacks on shadow fleet tankers.

Family friend, sources in Russia and Syria, and leaked data help give rare insight into life of dictator’s reclusive household

In 2011, a group of teenage boys spray-painted a warning on to a wall in their school playground: “It’s your turn, Doctor.” The graffiti was a thinly veiled threat that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, a London-trained ophthalmologist, would be next in the line of Arab dictators toppled by the then raging Arab spring.

It took 14 years, during which 620,000 were killed and nearly 14 million displaced, but eventually the doctor’s turn came and Assad was deposed, fleeing to Moscow in the middle of the night.