A senior commander has disappeared since the rebellion. Another was killed in an air strike in Ukraine. A third former commander was shot dead while on a picnic in what may have been an orchestrated strike.
The ranks of the Russian army have remained precarious in the days since a short-lived mutiny by Wagner’s mercenaries three weeks ago, as the pressures of Moscow’s 17-month war reverberate through the armed forces.
On Wednesday, the mystery deepened over the fate of General Sergei Surovikin, the country’s former supreme commander in Ukraine, dubbed “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, and who has not been seen since the mutiny.
One of the nation’s top lawmakers, when urged by a reporter, said the general was “taking a break.”
“He does not exist now,” said deputy Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma, added in a video posted to messaging app Telegram before speeding away from a reporter.
General Surovikin was an ally of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of Wagner’s mercenary company, whose forces launched a brief insurrection in late June aimed at overthrowing the Russian military leadership, before reneging on a deal with the Kremlin.
The New York Times reported that U.S. officials believed General Surovkin had foreknowledge of the rebellion but did not know if he participated. In the hours after the mutiny began, Russian authorities quickly released a video of the general calling on the Wagner fighters to stand down.
The lawmaker’s ambiguous comment about General Surovikin came two days after Russian authorities released the first video of the country’s top army officer, General Valery Gerasimov, since the mutiny.
In the video, General Gerasimov was receiving a report from the Russian Air Force, which is run by General Surovikin. But the person who provided the update in the footage was General Surovkin’s deputy, Colonel General Viktor Afzalov.
General Surovkin’s location is just one of many mysteries that have arisen since the rebellion. Despite a deal announced by the Kremlin, according to which Mr. Prigozhin would leave Russia for Belarus and avoid prosecution, the mercenary mogul appears to have remained in Russia.
The Kremlin revealed earlier this week that Prigozhin and his top commanders met with President Vladimir Putin five days into the rebellion, raising many questions about what kind of deal was struck with the former rebels.
Meanwhile, Russia has dealt another blow to its higher military ranks. Lieutenant General Oleg Tsukov, deputy commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, was killed in Ukraine during a missile attack Monday night on the occupied city of Berdyansk, marking one of the highest casualties for Russia during the Ukrainian war. authorities announced.
Russian deputy and retired general Andrei Gorolyov confirmed Tsukov’s death in an appearance on state television Wednesday, saying he “died heroically”. The death recalls the early days of the war, when Ukrainian officials said they killed nearly a dozen generals on the front lines.
Russian authorities also arrested a Ukrainian man on Wednesday on suspicion of shooting a former Russian submarine commander, Lt. Gen. Stanislav Rzhetsky, earlier this week in the southern city of Krasnodar, where he was deputy director of the city’s mobilization office. .
Russian news outlets reported that General Rzhetsky, who made his jogging routes public on the Strava training service, was shot and killed while jogging in Krasnodar Park.
On Tuesday, the day after the body was found, Ukraine’s military intelligence said in its official Telegram account that General Rzhetsky commanded a submarine involved in missile attacks on Ukraine. However, friends and relatives told Russian media that he left active military service before the invasion in February 2022.
And the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, quoting an anonymous source in the Russian law enforcement agencies, stated that the man who was arrested on Wednesday confessed under interrogation that he had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out the killing.
General Rzhetsky’s name has been entered into the online database Myrotvorets, which posts photos, social media accounts and phone numbers of people believed to have committed crimes against Ukraine.
A red stamp has been added to his image in the database with the words “liquidated”.
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