- The Russian general says he has been fired
- Says top brass betrayed Russian soldiers
- Ministry of Defense is silent on the general’s fate
- Soldiers are dying due to lack of artillery, says the general
MOSCOW, July 13 (Portal) – A Russian general said he was dismissed as commander after he told the military leadership about the dire situation on the front lines in Ukraine, where he said the failures of the top leaders in military brass fell on their backs.
After the Wagner mercenary mutiny on June 24, the biggest domestic political challenge for the Russian state in decades, President Vladimir Putin has so far left Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov in their posts.
Major General Ivan Popov, who commanded the 58th Combined Arms Army, said in a voice message released by Russian lawmaker Andrei Gurulev that he was fired after telling top politicians the truth about the situation at the front.
“The Ukrainian army could not break our ranks at the front, but our commander-in-chief hit us from behind and brutally beheaded the army at the most difficult and intense moment,” Popov said.
Popov, who commanded Russian units in southern Ukraine, specifically mentioned the deaths of Russian soldiers at the hands of Ukrainian artillery and said the army lacked proper counter-artillery systems and enemy artillery reconnaissance.
There was no immediate comment from the Department of Defense and Portal was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the voice message. Lawmaker Gurulyov is a former hard-line army commander who appears regularly on state television.
It was unclear when the message was recorded. The Department of Defense has said nothing about his dismissal.
Such public criticism of Russia’s military leadership by a battle-hardened general less than three weeks after the Wagner mutiny shows the level of discontent within the Russian army as it wages the largest land war in Europe since World War II.
RUSSIAN ARMY
Putin, Russia’s supreme leader since 1999, said the mutiny could have plunged Russia into civil war, likening it to the revolutionary riots of 1917 that virtually forced Russia’s exit from World War I.
The Kremlin has tried to instill calm, but Russian officials and diplomats have told Portal that the full meaning of the mutiny – which Prigozhin said was aimed only at settling scores with Shoigu and Gerasimov – has not yet been revealed.
Neither Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin nor General Sergey Surovikin, deputy commander of Russian military operations in Ukraine, have been seen in public since the day of the mutiny.
For months, Prigozhin had openly insulted Putin’s senior military officials, using a variety of crude profanities and prison jargon that shocked senior Russian officials but to which Putin, Shoigu or Gerasimov made no public reply.
Popov, 48, said he had distanced himself from the army’s “gladiators” but faced a turning point when he told military chiefs the truth.
“There was a difficult situation with the senior bosses, when it was necessary to either remain silent and be cowardly, or to say it like it is,” Popov said. He did not say when he made the complaints.
“I had no right to lie on behalf of you, on behalf of my fallen comrades-in-arms, so I laid out all the issues that existed.”
A Telegram channel linked to Wagner mercenaries said Popov raised the need to switch exhausted troops from the front with Gerasimov. Portal could not verify this report.
“The commanders-in-chief apparently sensed that I posed a threat and within a day quickly concocted an order from the defense minister and got rid of me,” Popov said. “I await my fate.”
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Edited by Andrew Osborn
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