Kireyev was drafted into the Imperial Russian Navy in 1911 and served in the Baltic Fleet during World War I as a ship's mechanic.
He became a Bolshevik and after the February Revolution led a detachment that helped organize the Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet.
Kireyev was born on 2 February 1890 in Lyudinovo in the Zhizdrinsky Uyezd of Kaluga Governorate to a working-class family.
Simultaneously, Kireyev was commissar of a detachment of sailors guarding Baltic Fleet property in Finland.
[1] From February to August, he led the Special Detachment of the Baltic Fleet Council of Commissars, among whose tasks was to organize the Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet, its evacuation from Helsingfors to Kronstadt ahead of German invasion forces.
At the end of 1921, Kireyev was transferred to Siberia to become a member of the Krasnoyarsk Governorate Party Committee.
[1] In October 1933, Kireyev became assistant commander of the Naval Forces in the Far East, which in 1935 became the Soviet Pacific Fleet.
[1][3] As a result of the call to extend the then-ongoing Great Purge to the armed forces, during the fall of 1937, Army Commissar 1st Rank Pyotr Smirnov led a working group to purge the Pacific Fleet of ""saboteurs" and "enemies of the people.
"[4] Smirnov used forced confessions from those previously arrested to implicate more officers and create the appearance of a conspiracy in the fleet.