A Russian general says he has been dismissed as a commander after telling the military leadership about the dire situation on the frontline in Ukraine – a sign of mounting tensions in the country’s military in the wake of the Wagner mercenary group’s mutiny.
Major General Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army fighting in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, which is a focal point in the Ukrainian counteroffensive, said in an audio statement to his troops that he was dismissed after a meeting with the top military brass in what he described as a “treacherous” stab in the back to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
Maj Gen Popov said that the military leadership was angered by his frank talk about the challenges faced by his forces.
“The top officers apparently saw me as a source of threat and rapidly issued an order to get rid of me, which was signed by the defence minister in just one day,” he said. “The Ukrainian military has failed to break through our army’s defenses, but the top commander hit us in the rear, treacherously and cowardly beheading the army at this most difficult moment.”
Maj Gen Popov, 48, claimed he had merely told the truth. “There was a tough situation with the senior bosses in which it was necessary either to keep quiet and be a coward or to say it the way it is,” he said.
He did not reveal when he raised the complaints, but added: “I had no right to lie in the name of you, in the name of my fallen comrades in arms, so I outlined all the problems which exist.”
In the wake of the 24-hour mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in late June – the biggest domestic challenge to the Russian state in decades – President Vladimir Putin has so far kept the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, in their jobs. But, without naming them, Maj Gen Popov’s angry missive is clearly aimed at the pair.
The voice message was published by Russian legislator Andrei Gurulyov late on Wednesday. Maj Gen Popov, whose military call sign was “Spartacus”, explicitly raised the deaths of Russian soldiers from Ukrainian artillery and said the army lacked proper counter-artillery systems and reconnaissance of enemy artillery. In the message he called his troops “dear gladiators”.
Mr Gurulyov is a hardline former army commander who regularly appears on state television. It was unclear when the message was recorded and Maj Gen Popov’s current whereabouts are not known. The defence ministry has not said anything about his dismissal.
However, such public criticism of Russia’s military leadership from a battle-hardened general less than three weeks after the mutiny led by Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, shows the level of dicontent that exists. Maj Gen Popov’s voice message has little of the hysteria that marked Mr Prigozhin’s repeated tirades against Russia’s military leadership in the months leading up to the mutiny. Mr Prigozhin had been openly insulting Mr Shoigu and Mr Gerasimov, using a variety of crude expletives and prison slang that shocked Russian officials.
Mr Putin has said the mutiny risked tipping Russia into civil war and has compared it to the revolutionary turmoil of 1917. The Kremlin has sought to project calm for days, but Russian officials and diplomats have told Reuters that the full consequences of the mutiny – which Mr Prigozhin said was aimed only at settling scores with Shoigu and Gerasimov – have yet to play out.
Neither Mr Prigozhin nor General Sergei Surovikin, a deputy commander of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, have been seen in public since the day of the mutiny.
In 2017, the official newspaper of Russia’s armed forces published a profile of Maj Gen Popov. It said he had previously served in Russia’s war against separatists in Chechnya and in the 2008 war in Georgia.
A Telegram channel linked to Wagner mercenaries said that Maj Gen Popov had raised the need to rotate exhausted troops from the frontline with Mr Gerasimov.
Russia’s main state television channels did not report the remarks by Maj Gen Popov on their main news programmes on Thursday, though Kommersant, a respected Russian newspaper, did report them.
War bloggers in Russia were split between those who said Popov’s remarks were open defiance and those who said Popov was not a mutineer but simply a well-respected general who had fallen out with the top brass.
“This is a dangerous precedent,” said Igor Girkin, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and then organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.
Maj Gen Popov said his future was now uncertain in his message. “I await my fate,” he said.
