A Russian general has said he has been fired as a commander after telling Moscow’s military leadership “the truth” about the dire situation at the front in Ukraine as tensions in the Russian army grow in the aftermath of the Wagner group’s short-lived mutiny.
Maj Gen Ivan Popov, who commanded the 58th Combined Arms army, which is fighting on the front in Ukraine near Zaporizhzhia, said in a voice message that he had been fired after he brought up problems on the battlefield, including the lack of counter-battery fire as well as deaths and injuries the army was suffering from Ukrainian attacks.
Popov’s emotional address was published late on Wednesday by Andrey Gurulyov, a retired Russian colonel general and Duma deputy.
It was not clear when Popov had recorded the message or who its intended recipients were.
Without naming them, Popov appeared to attack the head of the army, Valery Gerasimov, and the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, two of the country’s most powerful military men, accusing them of stabbing the country in the back.
“As many commanders of regiments and divisions said today, our army was not broken through the front, but our most senior commander hit us in the back, thus treacherously beheading the army in the most difficult period,” Popov said.
Popov added that he faced a choice with his superiors “to keep quiet and be a coward or to say it the way it is … Due to this, the seniors likely felt some danger in me and instantly, in one day, put together an order to the minister of defence and got rid of me.”
The open criticism of the military leadership by a senior Russian commander is rare and will dent the sense of unity that the Kremlin has been eager to project following the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion.
While Prigozhin has been openly insulting Putin’s most senior military men for months, senior members of the regular Russian army have refrained from such criticism.
Rumours have been swirling among Russian military bloggers that the Kremlin has sidelined Gerasimov, a veteran Russian commander whose resignation was one of Prigozhin’s core demands during his rebellion.
But judging by footage Moscow released this week that showed Gerasimov and Shoigu at work, Putin has kept his two most influential military men in their positions.
Some senior Russian officials on Thursday appeared to express sympathy for Popov.
Commenting on Popov’s statements, Andrei Turchak, the secretary general of Russia’s ruling United Russia party, said the general’s “conscience was clear”.
“Russia can be proud of such generals,” Turchak added.
The lawmaker however blasted Gurulyov, who first published the audio, for “creating a political show”.
Popov’s statements come amid mounting uncertainty within the Russian military.
On Wednesday, a senior Russian official said Sergei Surovikin, a top general who has not been seen in public since the Wagner mutiny, was “resting”.
Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the state Duma defence committee, told a Russian reporter on Wednesday he was “not available right now”.
Surovikin, who is known to have a close relationship with Prigozhin, was being interrogated by the security forces at an undisclosed location over his links to the warlord, according to media reports.
The British Ministry of Defence suggested that Surovikin had been “sidelined following the mutiny”, citing as evidence the “increased public profile” of his deputy, Viktor Afzalov.
On 10 July, the ministry reported, Afzalov was shown briefing Gerasimov in a televised appearance, Afzalov’s first appearance with Gerasimov, despite serving in the role for four years.
“Afzalov’s increased public profile, while Surovikin’s whereabouts remains unclear, adds further weight to the hypothesis that Surovikin has been sidelined following the mutiny,” the ministry wrote.
Wagner’s rebellion ended when a deal was struck offering amnesty for Prigozhin and his mercenaries along with permission to move to Belarus. But Prigozhin’s current whereabouts are unknown. Flight tracking data of his private jet seen by the Guardian suggests he has flown several times between Moscow and St Petersburg, where local news outlets have reported sightings of him.
Also on Wednesday, Moscow confirmed that Gen Oleg Tsokov, the deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district, was killed in Ukraine earlier in the week during a missile strike on the southern-occupied city of Berdiansk.
Tsokov is the second Russian general to be killed since the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. In total, more than a dozen Russian generals are believed to have been killed since Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia launched a third consecutive day of overnight drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, killing at least one person, regional officials said. The strikes came just hours after the end of the Nato summit in Lithuania. The Ukrainian air force said that 20 Iranian-made drones were shot down over Kyiv’s airspace.
