7:00 a.m. ET, June 29, 2023
There are questions about the fate of Russian Commander-in-Chief Sergey Surovikin
By CNN’s Jo Shelley, Sophie Tanno and Sarah Dean : Colonel General Sergei Surovikin attends a briefing at the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia June 9, 2017. Pavel Golovkin/AP
General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the Russian Air Force, has not been seen in public since Friday night when he video-appealed to Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to end his uprising.
Rumors of his whereabouts – and his possible role in the short-lived uprising – have been circulating in recent days.
On Wednesday, the Russian-language Moscow Times quoted two anonymous defense sources as saying that Surovikin had been arrested in connection with the failed mutiny. CNN could not independently verify this claim.
CNN has asked the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on Surovikin’s whereabouts. The Kremlin said Wednesday: “No comment,” and a Defense Ministry spokesman said: “I can’t comment on that.”
Asked about the widespread speculation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Thursday, “I have nothing to add to what I have already said on the subject.”
The video released on Friday has raised more questions than it has answered about Surovikin’s whereabouts and mental state. In the footage, he appears unshaven and with a halting performance, apparently reading from a script.
A popular blogger named Rybar noted on Wednesday: “Surovikin has not been seen since Saturday [and] It is not known for certain where “General Armageddon” was. [a nickname Surovikin was given by the Russian press] Is. There is a version that he is being interrogated.”
A prominent Russian journalist Alexey Venediktov – a former editor of the now-defunct Echo Moscow radio station – also claimed on Wednesday that Surovikin had not had contact with his family for three days.
Other Russian commentators said the general was not in custody.
A former Russian MP, Sergei Markov, said on Telegram that Surovikin attended a meeting in Rostov on Thursday, but did not say how he knew.
“Surovikin appeared at a meeting in Rostov,” he said. “As I wrote above, the rumors of the arrest of Surovikin dispel the issue of the rebellion to promote political instability in Russia.”
The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing US officials allegedly informed by American intelligence, that Surovikin “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.”
Who is General Surovikin?
Surovikin, whose military career began in 1983, has a checkered history and is known for alleged brutality.
Surovikin first served in Afghanistan in the 1980s before commanding a unit in the Second Chechen War in 2004. He was commander-in-chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces during Russian operations in Syria, during which Russian warplanes wreaked havoc on rebel-held areas.
According to reports in the Russian media and at least two think tanks, in 2004 he insulted a subordinate so violently that he took his own life.
And a book by the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation, a think tank, states that during the unsuccessful attempted coup against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, resulting in Surovikin being dead for at least six months prison spent there. In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch called him “someone who may have direct responsibility” for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure, in violation of the laws of war, during the 2019-2020 Syria Idlib offensive .
The attacks killed at least 1,600 civilians and displaced an estimated 1.4 million people, according to HRW, which cites UN figures.