Three successive commanders of Russia’s elite 247th Air Assault Regiment have either resigned or been killed since February 2022, mirroring a concerning trend of severe military attrition even among senior Russian ranks in Russia’s ongoing all-out war against Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry says in its 23 September intelligence update.

• Since February 2022, three successive commanders of one of Russia’s most prestigious airborne regiments have either resigned or been killed.
• The 247th Guards Air Assault Landing Regiment commander Colonel Vasily Popov was likely killed in the heavily contested Orikhiv sector in early September 2023. Only weeks before, in August 2023, his predecessor, Colonel Pytor Popov, likely resigned his command. Independent Russian media sources claim he acted in protest over the military’s failure to recover the bodies of Russian casualties.
• In the early weeks of the invasion, then 247th commander Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky was killed near Mykolaiv. The experience of the 247th highlights the extreme attrition and high turnover in Russia’s deployed military, even amongst relatively senior ranks.

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