2023-07-14 19:38:33
FILE IMAGE: Mercenaries of the Wagner group in the city of Rostov, Russia (REUTERS)
Russia’s problems on the front have come to light again with criticism from a general in the military high command that now comes from the Army itself almost three weeks after the failed mutiny of the Wagner Group mercenaries, some of whom are already training troops in Belarus.
Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th Army of the Russian Armed Forces operating in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, denounced serious mistakes by the Russian command, which cause a large number of casualties, after which he was relieved of his post.
“I say it honestly, there has been a complex situation with the leadership: you had to be a coward, shut up and say what they wanted to hear or call things by their name,” General Popov said in an audio, in which he first exposed plane fissures in the Army.
FILE PHOTO: A military column from the private mercenary group Wagner drives along the M-4 highway towards Moscow (Archyde.com)
Igor Guirkin, alias “Strelkov”, leader of the pro-Russian uprising in Donbas in 2014, described Popov’s statements as a “very dangerous precedent” and “an almost riot”.
“Only a great military defeat separates us from a new march to Moscow led by the regular Army,” he said, referring to the Wagner column that came 200 kilometers from the Russian capital during their uprising on June 24. .
Popov’s attempt to insubordinate himself to the General Staff is “a pattern of corrosive behavior that has developed within the Russian command and forces,” the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) found in turn.
Yevgeny Prigozhin with Vladimir Putin (DEF File)
According to the center, this rudeness is reminiscent of the rebellion of the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, during which he asked for the head of the Chief of the General Staff, Valeri Gerasimov, and the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu.
The ISW warned that the failures of the Russian Defense Ministry to “address the endemic problems of war” could lead to “a crisis of command in the future.”
His analysts also cited another case, that of the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinski, who temporarily resigned in January due to a conflict with Gerasimov over the strategy in Soledar and in March “appealed” to Russian President Vladimir Putin, allegedly for “the poor treatment of Wagner by the Ministry of Defense, the lack of transparency and the contempt for the Russian war effort.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin with members of the Wagner Group (Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File)
Insubordination is a latent threat to Putin, who revealed on Thursday his attempts to placate Wagner’s mercenaries five days after the failed rebellion by offering to join the regular army.
The president offered the Wagners options to meet “in one place” and “continue to serve” under the command of the commander of the private military company known as “Sedói” (Canoso), identified on the European Union sanctions list ( EU) from 2021 as Andrei Troshev, a founding member of Wagner.
Putin assured the Kommersant newspaper that, after hearing the proposal, many of the Wagnerite commanders agreed, but Prigozhin responded with a refusal.
El presidente ruso Vladimir Putin (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Meanwhile, some of the mercenaries are already in Belarus as military instructors preparing Territorial Defense units in this country, in a camp near the city of Osipovichi, 230 kilometers from Ukraine.
“It is a very useful experience for our Belarusian Army, which has not been involved in real combat since the (Soviet) war in Afghanistan,” a soldier said in a Defense Ministry video.
The Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, had already announced that Wagner could “serve the defense of Belarus if the country is attacked.”
(With information from EFE)
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