If true, the deaths of so many generals alongside senior Russian army and navy commanders – in just four weeks of fighting – exceed the rate of attrition seen in the worst months of combat in Russia’s bloody nine-year war in Chechnya. as well as Russian and Soviet campaigns in Afghanistan, Georgia and Syria.
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“It is highly unusual,” said a senior Western official who briefed reporters on the issue, who confirmed the names, ranks and “killed in action” status of the seven.
In all, at least 15 senior Russian commanders were killed in the field, said Markiyan Lubkivsky, a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry.
The Russian government has not confirmed the deaths of its generals.
If the numbers of senior commanders killed prove correct, the Russian generals were either extremely unlucky or successfully attacked – or both.
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Shooting generals is a legitimate war tactic – and it has been openly embraced by Ukrainian officials, who say their forces have focused on slowing the Russian advance by concentrating fire on Russian command and control units near the front lines .
Jeffrey Edmonds, former director for Russia at the National Security Council and now senior analyst at the CNA think tank in Washington, said Ukrainian forces appear to be targeting “anyone with gray hair standing near an antenna array,” a signal that they could be senior officers.
Some experts believe that the Russian military has struggled to keep its communications secure and that Ukrainian intelligence services found their targets through Russian negligence, with Russian forces restricted to using unencrypted devices. There have been reports of Russian soldiers using mobile phones.
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The Pentagon and other Western officials say Russian generals generally serve closer to the front lines than their NATO counterparts. The Russian army is by nature top-heavy with senior officers making them numerous but not expendable.
Military analysts and Western intelligence officials say the Russian generals in Ukraine may be more exposed and serving closer to the front lines because their side is struggling – and that senior officers are being deployed closer to the action to break up the chaos.
A Western official suggested that Russian generals would also be needed to push “terrified” Russian troops, including crude conscripts, to the front. Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to withdraw conscripts from combat after publicly pledging not to use them.
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Pentagon, NATO and Western officials say the Russian army in Ukraine is struggling with low morale.
According to a Western official and a Ukrainian journalist, Russian soldiers attacked and wounded their commanding officer after their brigade suffered heavy casualties in fighting outside the capital Kyiv.
Troops from the 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade drove a tank into Colonel Yuri Medvedev and injured both their legs after their unit lost nearly half its men, according to a Facebook post by Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsymbaliuk. The Post said the Colonel was hospitalized.
A senior Western official said he believed Medvedev was killed “as a result of the scale of casualties suffered by his own brigade.”
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Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told the Washington Post that the Ukrainian army has focused its efforts on slowing the pace of the Russian invasion, in part by “decapitating” front command posts, meaning they kill, not literally be beheaded.
Killing senior officers can slow the Russian advance by “three or four or five days” before new command structures can be established, Arestovych said.
He attributed successful targeting to both “excellent intelligence” and numerous Russian vulnerabilities.
Arestovych claimed that killing their generals not only slows Russian momentum, but also undermines Russian morale while boosting Ukrainian resolve.
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“The deaths of such commanders are quickly publicized and very difficult to hide,” he said. “Unlike the death of a simple soldier, it makes an oversized impression.”
Ukrainian and Western officials have named seven Russian generals killed in combat: Magomed Tushayev, Andrei Sukhovetsky, Vitaly Gerasimov, Andrey Kolesnikov, Oleg Mityaev, Yakov Rezanstev and Andrei Mordvichev.
Russian officials and Russian media have confirmed the death of only one general.
Sukhovetsky, a deputy commander of the Russian 41st Army, was killed by a sniper early in the war, Ukrainian officials said. At his funeral in Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port city, a deputy mayor said Sukhovetsky “died heroically while on combat duty during a special operation in Ukraine.”
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Christo Grosev, director of the open-source investigation group Bellingcat, said he had confirmed Gerasimov’s death, which was first announced by the Ukrainian intelligence service. The Bellingcat investigator also reported a March 7 phone call from a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reporting the death to its supervisor, a call intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and shared with reporters.
One of the first commanders whom Ukraine wanted killed in late February was Tushayev, a right-hand man of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kadyrov denied the allegation on his Telegram channel, and Chechen Information Minister Akhmed Dudayev released an audio message allegedly from Tushayev, proving he was alive.
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The deaths of senior officers are being celebrated on Ukrainian social media – but kept out of Russian news.
Killing Russian generals “feels consequential for Ukraine,” especially in “the David versus Goliath narrative they’re living through,” said Margarita Konaev, an expert on Russian military innovation at Georgetown’s Center for Security and New Technologies -University.
She said the nature of the fighting – close quarters in urban settings – is likely to increase the number of dead bodies on both sides, for civilians, enlisted men and commanders.
The urban dimension is particularly deadly, she said.
Mason Clark, a senior analyst and expert on the Russian military at the Institute for the Study of War, said Ukrainian reports indicate that radio communications between Russian forces are vulnerable to interception and location.
Before the war with Russia began, Clark said Ukrainian forces learned how to use communications to “target and accurately locate” the sources of artillery fire in the Separatist enclaves in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
“They used this training extensively,” Clark said.
Ruth Deyermond, an expert on post-Soviet security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said it was not known how the loss of senior officers in Ukraine might affect thinking in the Kremlin.
As Putin’s circle has shrunk and decision-making has become more opaque, she said, “You don’t even know what Putin is being told about casualties by his own military.”
The reported high turnover rate of Russian commanders in Ukraine underscores the problem of invading the country based on false assumptions, expecting to quickly overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a puppet regime to bring it back into Moscow’s sphere of influence. A military operation predicted by Russia to last a few days has entered its second month.
Russia is very sensitive to military casualties, especially high-ranking officers.
Russian authorities called the invasion a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of “neo-Nazis”, banned journalists from using the term “war” and criminalized criticism of the military or publishing information that might damage its reputation.
After Russia’s initial failure, Putin has simply redoubled his war effort while the Kremlin dampened hopes of an exit through peace talks. Russian authorities appear to be preparing for a long, bloody campaign, drumming up a propaganda blitz for internal unity as the military ramps up pressure on Ukraine.
Booth reported from London, Dixon from Riga, Latvia and Stern from Mukachevo, Ukraine. Liz Sly in London contributed to this report.