An aide to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny was killed when a grenade hidden in a birthday present detonated.

According to a statement from Zaluzhny, Maj. Gennadiy Chastiakov, 39, was celebrating his birthday at home when an "unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts," killing him and wounding his son. He leaves behind a wife and four children, one of whom was hurt in the explosion.

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"Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed ... on his birthday," the Ukrainian general wrote, saying that an "unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts."

He heaped praise upon his former aide, saying that he had been a great help in the war with Russia and had devoted his life to the military.

"From the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Gennadiy was a reliable shoulder for me, completely devoting his life to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the fight against Russian aggression," he wrote.

Zaluzhny said an investigation into the blast had been launched.

Citing sources in Ukrainian law enforcement, Ukrainska Pravda said that Chastiakov's widow revealed that the deadly gift was a package containing a bottle of alcohol and shot glasses in the shape of grenades.

Igor Klimenko, the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, said that the police searched the apartment and found five more live grenades. The office of Chastiakov's colleague, who had given him the gift, was also searched, and two grenades were found. They were all collected for examination.

Klimenko said, according to the investigation, the explosion occurred when Chastiakov had taken a live grenade contained in the gift from his son, who had grabbed the safety pin of the grenade. The safety pin was accidentally pulled out by the two, leading to the detonation.

Despite the strange circumstances, foul play was not immediately cited as the reason behind Chastiakov's death.

Many Russian figures met the news with amusement. Olga Skabeeva, a pro-Kremlin television personality, responded to the story with a nursery rhyme about an elephant that sat on a hedgehog.

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Others alleged a conspiracy. An adviser to the head of the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People's Republic, cited by the Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, alleged that there was a secret rift between Chastiakov and Zaluzhny, who himself was behind the blast.

Deaths of prominent personnel during the war in Ukraine have largely been limited to the Russian side. Since the start of Russia's invasion, two pro-Kremlin Russian journalists, Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tartarsky, were killed in targeted bombing attacks. The latter was killed in a St. Petersburg cafe when a bomb hidden in a statuette award was detonated.