UKRAINE’S DOMESTIC security service, known as the SBU, wasted no time. On December 16th the SBU accused General Igor Kirillov, the man in charge of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, of the “mass use” of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine. A day later Mr Kirillov was dead, the victim of an early-morning explosion near a residential building in Moscow. Footage shared online showed two bodies, presumably those of the general and his aide, who also died in the attack, sprawled on the pavement alongside a burnt-out electric scooter.