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Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter


NextImg:Russian general accuses leaders of treachery amid political infighting and officers' deaths

Russian defense authorities sacked a senior general for detailing “the problems that exist today in the army” to his superiors, according to an audio recording attributed to the embittered commander.

"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,” a man identified as Russian Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov said in a recording that circulated Wednesday on social media.

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That outburst appeared to international observers as the latest glimpse of the rifts inside Russian power centers, three weeks after Wagner Group chief executive Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief and dramatic uprising against senior defense leaders. The new denunciation seems to target Gen. Valery Gerasimov and points to persistent political infighting between a military command structure that also is suffering the wartime deaths of senior generals at Ukrainian hands.

“I named all the problems that exist today in the army regarding operations, supply,” Popov said, according to a War Translated project. “Due to this, the seniors likely felt some danger in me and instantly, in one day, put together an order to the Minister of Defense and got rid of me.”

The audio surfaced just two days after Gerasimov, the Russian military chief of the general staff, “made [on Monday] his first public appearance” since the Prigozhin uprising.

In this handout photo taken from video released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, July 10, 2023, Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov speaks to officers while watching a video report from the chief of staff of Russia's aerospace forces about a missile attack on Russian territory on Sunday, July 9, 2023. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Another prominent Russian commander, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, who was for a time the officer in charge of all military operations in Ukraine, disappeared after the mutiny amid rumors that he had advance knowledge of Prigozhin’s plans.

“He's on holiday now,” senior Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov, who chairs the Russian parliament’s armed services committee, said on camera when asked about Surovikin’s whereabouts. “Out of touch.”

Russia’s senior officer corps has sustained several more conventional casualties. Russian Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov was killed on Monday, according to claims by Ukrainian officials that have been confirmed by one of Kartapolov’s colleagues on the defense committee.

“[Tsokov] died a heroic death,” Russian lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov said during an interview, according to the Moscow Times.

Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky was shot dead Monday while jogging in the city of Krasnodar.

“He was shot seven times with a Makarov pistol around 06:00 a.m. Rzhytskyi died on the spot due to his gunshot wounds,” Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency said in a Tuesday statement that made no explicit claim of responsibility for his death. “The park was deserted due to heavy rain, so no witnesses could provide details or identify the gunman.”

Those two deaths add to a tally of Russian generals that Japan and NATO intelligence agencies reportedly believe runs higher than 20.

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Popov reportedly has been overseeing military operations in Zaporizhzhia, one of the regions that the Kremlin wants to seize from Ukraine and a key area for the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. The audio attributed to Popov “was publicized by an MP who commanded the same army before,” according to the Economist, and it hints at a closed-door confrontation over his self-described unwillingness to say “what they wanted to hear” about the state of the war.

“I pointed the attention to the most important tragedy of the modern war — the lack of counterbattery fire, lack of artillery reconnaissance stations, and mass casualties and injuries of our brothers from enemy artillery,” he said. "I also raised a number of other issues, expressed them to the highest levels, did it openly and very brutally."