According to British intelligence, Russian President Vladimir Putin has lost faith in his top general and has fired other senior commanders for their high-profile and embarrassing military failures in Ukraine.
Lt. Gen. Serhiy Kisel, commander of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army, was fired by the Kremlin on Tuesday morning, according to British military intelligence. Following reports that Ukrainian forces have taken advantage of Russia's retreat and forced the invading soldiers back to their border, international attention has been drawn to the strategically important northeastern Ukrainian city. Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, is likely to be suspended for allowing the flagship cruiser Moskva to sink in April as a result of an alleged missile attack, which the Ukrainian military claims responsibility for.Perhaps most importantly, Valeriy Gerasimov, the Russian General Staff chief — a position approximately equivalent to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States – remains in his post, but "it is uncertain whether he retains President Putin's confidence," according to British intelligence.
The harsh judgment comes after reports that at least a dozen Russian generals had perished in battle — an ostensibly shocking statistic that the Pentagon has dismissed as indicative of how the Kremlin goes to war paired with the dysfunctional status of a Soviet-era army.
It also comes amid rising speculation that Putin is now guiding his military's tactical decisions, as Russian forces continue to fall short of their goals, most notably capturing control of Ukraine's government, despite mounting domestic pressure.
According to the report, "a culture of cover-ups and scapegoating is almost certainly entrenched inside the Russian military and security establishment." "Efforts to evade personal responsibility for Russia's operational setbacks will certainly keep many officials participating in the invasion of Ukraine distracted.According to the report, the trends are likely to put more strain on Russia's centralized command and control paradigm, as officers seek to delay crucial decisions to their superiors.
"Regaining the initiative under these circumstances will be tough for Russia," it warned.
For weeks, Ukrainian officials have pushed tales and photographs on social media purporting to depict Russian general officers among the battlefield casualties, including one widely publicized incident in March in which a general's body was abandoned in the dirt as his own forces relocated.
At the time, Mykhailo Podoliak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted the names of generals he claimed were killed, claiming that their deaths showed the Russian army was "completely unprepared" and "fights only with numbers and cruise missiles."
According to a Pentagon official at the time, Russia's army differs significantly from its Western counterparts, particularly the American armed forces, which delegate consequential decision-making authority to junior officers and rely heavily on senior enlisted non-commissioned officers' seasoned operational experience.
"They don't structure their military in the same manner we do," the official said, implying that Russia's policy puts its generals in more dangerous situations than their American counterparts.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, only one American general perished in battle. In 2014, an Afghan National Army member opened fire on officials visiting a headquarters in Afghanistan during an inspection tour, killing Maj. Gen. Harold Greene. His was the first killing of a general officer by foreign combatants since the Pentagon attack on September 11, 2001, and the first on foreign soil since the Vietnam War.
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