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"The Minister of Defense should commit suicide": Putin's men are restless in the defeat of Russia and Ukraine on the front line

2022-10-07T09:33:17.349Z


Since the recapture of Kharkiv last month, the Ukrainian army has moved eastward to threaten Lugansk, and has also opened a breach in Kherson in the south, recently along the Dnieper River.


Since the recapture of Kharkiv last month, the Ukrainian army has been advancing eastward to threaten Lugansk, and has also opened a breach in Kherson in the south, recently along the Dnieper River from the north The south quickly advanced dozens of kilometers.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy chairman of the Kherson military-civilian administrative agency appointed by Russia, posted a video on Telegram on October 6, publicly accusing Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu: "Many people are saying, The Secretary of Defense who allows things to be discovered like this should just swallow the gun and kill himself like a real military officer."


Stremusov's attack on the Defense Ministry is not an isolated case.

Just the day before (5th), Andrey Kartapolov, the former deputy defense minister from 2018 to 2021 and the current chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, also publicly criticized the Ministry of Defense on state TV, claiming that the Ministry of Defense's priority The task is to "stop lying", "the enemy is already on our soil, virtually all the border villages in Belgorod have been destroyed", referring to the fact that the Russian people are well aware of this, just some "individual management". "Who" is not yet known - an allusion to Shoigu.

Criticism of the Defense Ministry's military operations in Ukraine in Russia has been mainly from right-wing nationalist military observers.

However, following events such as the collapse of Kharkov, the chaos of Putin's "partial mobilization" and the loss of key cities such as Izyum and Lyman, the camp of critics has expanded considerably.

On the one hand, a group of media people belonging to the Ukrainian hawks, such as Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of "Russia Today" (Rossiya Segodnya), and Vladimir Solovyov, a talk show host in his own name, are constantly disagreeing with each other. Qualified but conscripted people speak up.

However, they all pointed the finger at the local government departments and personnel responsible for military recruitment, not Putin.

Battle of Kherson as of October 6.

The light blue part in the picture is the land recaptured by the Ukrainian army.

(ISW)

On the other hand, forces other than the official Russian army on the Ukrainian battlefield have also become high profile.

The first was the chief executive of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who led the Chechen army in Ukraine.

After the Russian side lost Liman, Kadyrov named Alexander Lapin, the commander-in-chief of the Central Military District in charge of the Donetsk front, that he was responsible for the loss of Liman, and criticized the latter for sending the army to the Liman front , but did not provide the necessary communication, interaction and ammunition support, and withdrew from the front line before the arrival of the Ukrainian army, and took command from 150 kilometers away.

Kadyrov also claimed that he had declared the danger to the Russian army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov two weeks before the fall of Liman, but the latter did not listen.

Kadyrov believes that Gerasimov "looks after" Lapin so that he does not have to be punished, berating "especially in difficult times, when there is no crony position in the army".

Kadyrov's criticism was supported by some Russian right-wing military observers, as Moscow only fired another general after the fall of Leman.

Ramzan Kadyrov, Chief Executive of the Chechen Republic.

(AP)

Another figure is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the "Wagner Group" (Wagner Group), known as "Putin's cook".

Founded in 2014, the Wagner Corps has been secretly supporting Russia's foreign military operations, and is active in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali and other places in the form of mercenaries.

In the past, Prigozhin has refused to admit his involvement with the Wagner Corps, and even sued the reporters who reported it.

But at the end of September, he suddenly and publicly acknowledged that he was the founder of the Wagner Corps, describing how he personally cleaned old weapons, selected body armor and so on in the initial stage.

In addition to publicly supporting Kadyrov's criticism of the high-level Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin also continued on October 6 his operation of turning the Wagner Corps from "underground" to "on the ground", formally establishing a "peacekeeping force". ” (МИРОТВОРЕЦ) on the Telegram channel, with the slogan “We came from hell, we are Wagner, our business is death, and business is good”.

The high-profile stance of Kadyrov and Prigozhin may be due to the power struggle between different military forces within Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Yevgeny Prigozhin (right), founder of the "Wagner Group" and known as "Putin's cook".

(Twitter @SamRamani2)

On the Ukrainian battlefield, the only front that Russia can take the initiative to attack at present is the Siversk-Bakhmut line of defense in Udon Donetsk.

The Chechen Corps and the Wagner Corps were slowly attacking the Ukrainian army on the front line.

The war against Putin by Kadyrov and Prigozhin has become even more important at a time when the Russian army, under the direct command and leadership of the Ministry of Defense, has been repelled by the Ukrainian forces in both Luhansk and Kherson. more bidding power.

After high-profile criticism of the top defense ministry, Kadyrov was not only not suppressed by Moscow, but was awarded the military rank of "general" by Putin on October 5.

Some analysts believe that this move further proves that Putin is alienating the current Defense Minister Shoigu, and is ready to shirk the responsibility for the failure of the Ukraine war on the latter.

At a time when Russia's different military forces are at odds, some may see this as causing instability in Russia and possibly even destabilizing Putin's governance.

But judging from the current situation, this is probably far from the truth.

Russian Defense Minister Shoigu.

(AP)

On the same day that Putin awarded Kadyrov the rank of "general", some military observers who had criticized Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov were detained by the authorities, showing that Russia The boundaries of internal critical voices remain firmly in Putin's hands.

And according to a poll released on October 5, people can also see a fairly representative Russian public sentiment.

The poll showed that 60 percent of the people would support Putin's new offensive against Kyiv, but at the same time, if Putin decides to reach peace with Ukraine and stop military action, 75 percent support it.

It can be seen that the political choice of the Russians is made by Putin on their behalf, no matter what the specific choice is.

If this popular sentiment remains unchanged and Putin's detached status does not change, no matter how the various heroes under Putin's command criticize each other, they can only be the power of "Putin's command", and it is difficult to shake Putin's governance.

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Source: hk1

All news articles on 2022-10-07

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