General Armageddon: Russia ‘arrests Sergei Surovikin’ over knowledge of Wagner mutiny

A prime Russian common has reportedly been arrested for having knowledge of Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s weekend riot.

General Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” by the Russian press for his aggressive techniques within the Syrian battle, has been lacking since Saturday when his troops launched an armed revolt.

Wagner mercenaries left Ukraine to grab a navy headquarters in a southern Russian metropolis, earlier than turning round some 200km from Moscow and their boss abruptly calling off the rebellion.

The 56-year-old second-in-command of the Russian armed forces is claimed to be beneath interrogation.

“Apparently, he [Surovikin] selected Prigozhin’s facet throughout the rebellion” and so they have gotten ahold of him,” the Moscow Instances quoted a supply as saying.

Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the shuttered Ekho Moskvy radio station, on Wednesday wrote on Telegram that General Surovikin has not been involved along with his household for 3 days.

US officers on Wednesday mentioned the overall was sympathetic to the mercenary chief, though it was unclear if he actively supported it.

The Kremlin, nevertheless, performed down the report, saying that there was and could be rather a lot of “hypothesis and gossip”, suggesting that Vladimir Putin had not given in to Mr Prigozhin’s calls for for an imminent reshuffle of the Russian navy’s prime brass.

Rybar, an influential channel on Telegram run by a former Russian defence ministry press officer, mentioned a “purge” was underway.

He mentioned the authorities have been making an attempt to “weed out” navy personnel deemed to have proven “a scarcity of decisiveness” in placing down the mutiny amid some experiences that elements of the armed forces seem to have accomplished little to cease Wagner fighters within the preliminary stage of the riot.

“The armed insurgency by the Wagner personal navy firm has turn into a pretext for a large purge within the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces,” mentioned Rybar.

The Wagner Group is a non-public navy firm beneath the management of Mr Prigozhin that minimize its enamel in deployments to Crimea and jap Ukraine’s Donbas area in 2014 and has since dispatched troops to a number of conflicts within the Center East and Africa, together with the Syrian Civil Battle.

In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has confirmed indispensable, however an obvious energy wrestle between the Kremlin and the outspoken Mr Prigozhin has led to the group having its wings clipped by Moscow.

The friction escalated to a disaster level on Friday 23 June, when Mr Prigozhin accused his nation’s defence ministry, Sergei Shoigu, of “destroying” his fighters and concocting lies to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Mr Prigozhin referred to as for armed mutiny in an explosive rant on Telegram by which he vowed to cease the “evil” of the Kremlin’s prime brass.

The Wagner Group’s chief didn’t go after Mr Putin in his tirade, as a substitute alleging that for greater than a 12 months and over 350,000 casualties into the war — a big half of which Mr Prigozhin’s group is answerable for — the Russian president had been deceived by Mr Shoigu.

Other than Mr Surovikin, one other prime common has been away from public view because the mutiny or talked about in a defence ministry press launch since 9 June both.

Valery Gerasimov is the commander of Russia’s battle in Ukraine, and the holder of one of Russia’s three “nuclear briefcases,” in keeping with some Western navy analysts.