Commander and vice commander of war operations in Ukraine were no longer seen in public after Wagner Group mutiny. Website says one of them, Serguei Surovikin, was reportedly arrested. Kremlin declined to comment
Two of the most prominent Russian generals in command of war operations in Ukraine have not appeared in public since the end of the Wagner Group rebellion late last week.
The Russian website Moscow Times said Wednesday (6/28) that one of them, the deputy commander of operations, General Sergei Surovikin, has been detained on suspicion of being linked to the rebellion.
A person connected with the Russian Defense Ministry told the website: “It seems that he [Surovikin] chose the side [of the Wagner Group] and there was no other choice.”
The first to raise the alarm about Surovikin’s alleged detention was Russian military blogger Vladimir Romanov, who claimed that the general has been in custody since Sunday, the day after the rebellion failed.
According to Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov of Moscow’s independent Eco radio, Surovikin has not communicated with his family for three days.
Surovikin was last seen on Saturday, when he appeared in a video appealing for the Wagner Group to stop their mutiny. In the video, Surovikin appeared exhausted and it was unclear whether he was being coerced to speak – some analysts likened the image to a video of a hostage appeal.
“Speculation”
The Kremlin, meanwhile, called the report in The New York Times that Surovikin was reportedly aware of the rebellion plans of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin speculation.
However, the Kremlin spokesman did not come out in defense of Prigozhin or clearly exonerate him from any involvement in the rebellion.
Reasons for this he would have, for last Friday, shortly after the uprising began, Surovikin called on the Wagner Group fighters to halt the rebellion. “It is necessary to obey the will and orders of the elected president of Russia,” he said in a video broadcast on Telegram by a Russian state television journalist.
On Thursday, the Kremlin spokesman also did not answer whether Surovikin would have been detained. “No, regrettably I cannot comment. I recommend you to address the Defense Ministry, that is its prerogative.”
Support among the military?
Prigozhin worked with Surovikin during the Russian military intervention in Syria and has previously described the general as the most capable in Russia’s armed forces. At the same time, the Wagner Group leader is a strong critic of the commander of war operations in Ukraine and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
U.S. government officials assess that Prigozhin would not have started his rebellion if he did not expect to have the support of others in positions of power, the New York Times wrote.
U.S. intelligence is still trying to determine what degree of support Prigozhin had within the Russian military leadership. Analysts note that the Wagner Group easily took over the military campaign HQ in Rostov.
Gerasimov “gone,” Shoigu not
Gerasimov is also missing from public appearances. He has not been seen since last Saturday, the second and last day of the rebellion. Gerasimov is also no longer mentioned in press releases of the Russian military since June 9.
In his messages after the rebellion, Prigozhin said that the uprising did not seek to overthrow the government of President Vladimir Putin, but to oust Gerasimov and Shoigu, whom he repeatedly accused of incompetence in leading the invasion of Ukraine.
After the uprising ended, Shoigu was the only one of the two generals to appear in public. On Monday, Russian state television broadcast footage of him inspecting troops in Ukraine.
The same day he attended a meeting with Putin, which, in the president’s words, would “discuss the situation” and at which the Russian leader thanked him “for the work done in recent days.” Gerasimov, even though he is the commander of the war operations, did not attend the meeting.
Russian Defense Minister on tightrope after insurrection
Russian Defense Minister Serguei Shoigu has again appeared on television. On June 24, during the armed insurrection of the private army Wagner Group directed against him, and the next day, he kept out of the public sphere. Only on Monday the national media showed images of him: in the morning supposedly in the combat zone in Ukraine, and in the evening at a meeting of the security authorities with President Vladimir Putin. To this day Shoigu has not commented on the mutiny.
“He’s following his own instinct,” analyzes Brian Taylor, a Russia expert at Syracuse University in New York. “When he was civil defense minister, he liked to show up at disaster sites. He stressed that he was in charge there, and earned a trust bonus. Now that this is a catastrophe for which he himself is responsible, he doesn’t want to be seen in public. But behind the scenes he is working closely with Putin and others to secure his position.”
The conflict between Wagner Group founder and leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and the head of the Defense Ministry has escalated in recent months. First Prigozhin blamed Shoigu and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov for the lack of ammunition in the fighting in Bakhmut. The ministry’s press department hit back and Shoigu did not embark on the conflict.
Good reasons to fire Shoigu
However, the mercenary leader has sharpened his criticism not only of how the war is being waged and at what cost, but also of how the Kremlin justifies the invasion of Ukraine. In Taylor’s opinion, the imputations against Shoigu and Gerasimov are “justified to some extent, and the war is going very badly for Russia,” however many of Prigozhin’s accusations “expressly hit Putin,” who is alleged to have invaded the neighboring country under false pretenses.
The Kremlin chief needs to decide whether to keep Shoigu in office. Taylor notes that much of what the defense minister told his superior about the new army “proved not to be true, and so it would be logical if Shoigu were sent away.” Yet these untruths were already obvious a year ago, right after the invasion of Ukraine.
The analyst recalls that Shoigu is a civilian defense minister, while the military is responsible for fiascos at various levels. On the other hand, it is the president who is answerable for bad calculations and unmet goals, such as a power exchange in Ukraine. However Putin dismissing Shoigu immediately would be a sign of weakness, it would be giving in to Prigozhin, whom he accused of treason, argues Taylor.
Also for Fabian Burkhardt, a Russia expert at the University of Regensburg, a resignation right after the uprising would be “an unmistakable sign of weakness”: “Even though it has become clear that Shoigu’s unpopularity is extreme, also in the Army, there may be good arguments for waiting and announcing the ouster at a later time.”
Putin’s close ally
It is known that Putin does not fire those he considers to be his people. Serguei Shoigu is a special case, as his biography shows. Now 68 years old, he comes from a wealthy background in the Soviet nomenklatura: his father was a Communist Party secretary in Tuva, now an autonomous republic.
After graduating as a civil engineer, Shoigu made a fast career, directing important construction projects at a young age. In the last years of the Soviet Union, he moved to Moscow, where he founded and directed the State Rescue Service. This would become the Ministry of Civil Defense, which Shoigu headed for almost 20 years.
By the late 1990s, he counted as Russia’s most liked minister, and led the newly formed Kremlin party, Unity, the precursor to today’s United Russia. In 2012, as soon as Putin switched back from prime minister to president, Shoigu was appointed governor of the Moscow region.
A few months later, he took over the defense portfolio and started with reforms. Soon the Soviet practice of unannounced combat readiness checks was resumed in the Russian army. In the 2021 elections, Shoigu once again occupied the top position on his party’s list.
In the second and fourth semesters of 2021, just before Russia mobilized troops to the borders with Ukraine, the president and defense minister retreated to the boreal taiga forests. Photos from the time highlight the special relationship between the two.
Could Shoigu standoff be to Kiev’s advantage?
So Shoigu was being considered as Putin’s successor, but for Brian Taylor this is unlikely. Besides the fact that “the whole logic of Putin’s highly personalized system provides no alternative and no successor,” the analyst points to two other reasons: first, both are almost the same age, and a new president would have to come from the younger generation.
Second, “Shoigu’s potential to become president is also restricted by the fact that he is not an ethnic Russian. Instead, he remains “a well-assured defense minister and a Putin ally who is prestigious and appreciated.”
One biographical detail lends an emotional note to the conflict with Yevgeny Prigozhin: in the early 1980s, Shoigu was running a Siberian contracting firm, like more than 10,000 inmates under two orders. And now, 40 years later the Wagner Group – to which numerous former prisoners now belong, including Prigozhin himself – has started an armed uprising aimed at ousting Shoigu from office.
Putin’s standoff is a tough one, Taylor notes: ousting Shoigu would be a sign of weakness; keeping him could aggravate dissatisfaction in the Armed Forces with the Defense Ministry. So it would not be surprising if, in a few weeks, the president dismisses the minister, giving him another honorable post.
In the expert’s opinion, “Ukraine may also benefit from the consequences of the insurrection”: the Russian army’s reaction to Kiev’s counteroffensive may be less organized, and combat morale, weakened. Since fighting continued even during the mutiny, however, a collapse of Russian forces at the front is not to be expected.