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Vladimir Putin fired top Russian general? What we know so far
The general was not seen in public since Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's brief mutiny.
Russian president Vladimir Putin may have dismissed his top general- Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov- reports suggested. The general was not seen in public since Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's brief mutiny last month. But Moscow released a video that appeared to show him at a briefing on the war in Ukraine.
After days of being absent from public view, some Russian military bloggers and prominent figures suggested that Valery Gerasimov had been removed from his post. Those claims were repeated by Western outlets.
The Moscow Times reported that Valery Gerasimov formally retains his post as Chief of the General Staff, but “has nothing to do with resolving issues at the front" which according to Russian military bloggers said that it has been handed to Colonel-General Mikhail Teplinsky who took over as commander of the Airborne Forces in June 2022 and became deputy commander of a grouping in Ukraine in April.
Pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger Vladimir Romanov appeared to confirm that Teplinsky is the one running operations on the Russian side.
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"The armed rebellion of PMC 'Wagner' became the reason for large-scale purges in the ranks of the RF (Russian Federation) Armed Forces and a crash test of the ministry for loyalty," .it said.
Russia's defense ministry published a video that showed Gerasimov as the man in charge saying that he was listening to a report about Ukrainian missile attacks in the Crimea, Rostov and Kaluga regions at a meeting attended by top generals. In the video, he was seen listening to a report from First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Colonel General Viktor Afzalov, on "the destruction of four Ukrainian ballistic targets," the defense ministry said.
“According to the report of Colonel General Viktor Afzalov, two S-200 missiles were destroyed by air defense systems, and two similar missiles were intercepted using electronic countermeasures. There are no casualties and no damage," the statement read.
