Russian President Vladimir Putin has carried out his first major purge of the military since the rebellion by the Wagner mercenary company last weekend. General Sergei Surovikin, one of the great exponents of one of the factions critical of the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and close to the businessman Yevgueni Prigozhin, has been arrested for his alleged involvement in the riot.
The information has been disseminated both by the independent newspaper The Moscow Times, which cites two different sources, such as by a well-known Russian pro-war blogger, Vladimir Romanov. According to this blogger, Surovikin is being held in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in Moscow. Director of echo of moscow, the renowned journalist Alexéi Venedíktov, has also reported that the military’s family has not known his whereabouts since the rebellion. “General Surovikin has not been in contact with his family for three days. Neither do his escorts respond. I only have those facts, ”said the veteran head of the radio, liquidated by the Kremlin at the beginning of the war.
Sergei Vladimirovich Surovikin (Novosibirsk, 56 years old) had been appointed sole commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine in the fall of last year to rebuild the front after the setbacks in Kharkov and Kherson, whose capital he evacuated in an orderly manner. However, he was replaced in January by Shoigu’s dauphin and chief of the Russian General Staff, Valeri Gerasimov, also a great rival of Wagner’s owner. It was a surprise decision, which caused disappointment among the army’s own ranks, after having managed to stabilize the front on the opposite bank of Kherson.
The newspaper The New York Times published on Wednesday that Surovikin knew of Prigozhin’s plans for rebellion. Last Saturday he appeared in a video recorded inside a small room in which he ordered the mercenaries to lay down their weapons and withdraw. Surovikin may not be the only Russian general who was able to support Prigozhin’s uprising, some US officials told The New York Times, believing that Wagner’s leader would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power They would come to your aid. Another US outlet, The Wall Street Journal, publishes that Prigozhin’s plans were aimed at capturing the Russian Defense Minister and the Russian head of state in order to gain control of the army, but that he had to advance his movement when he was discovered, sources indicate. Western intelligence. However, a Kremlin spokesman on Wednesday called the Times’ information “hearsay and speculation.”.
“In the context of Prigozhin, apparently [Surovikin] he chose his side [de Prigozhin durante la rebelión] and they grabbed him by the balls,” one of the sources told The Moscow Times. Asked where the general is, he did not give details. “We don’t even comment on this information through internal channels.”
Surovikin had been received in October with applause by the most warmongering Russian sector, including the Chechen president, Ramzán Kadírov. A veteran of Chechnya and Syria, the first people killed behind his back were Russians: in the communist coup in August 1991, he led the battalion that killed three protesters in downtown Moscow, the only victims of that protest.
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There are many ruthless actions of this Russian general throughout his career, but the one for which he earned the nickname of The Aleppo butcher. Surovikin oversaw the bombing of the city of the same name during the brutal battle for Aleppo that took place there, which rebel militias and jihadist groups seized at the start of the riots, in 2011. Many then remembered the merciless siege of Grozny, in Chechnya. .
His last appointment took place a few weeks ago, when in the last open crisis between Prigozhin and Shoigu he was appointed as Wagner’s liaison with the Russian high command.
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