President Putin with General Gerasimov in 2021. — © AFP
Was Russia’s top commander Valeri Gerasimov killed by a Ukrainian airstrike? The rumor mill is already running at full speed. There has been no official confirmation yet, but it is certain that Gerasimov has not appeared in public since December 29.
It was the Russian Telegram channel ‘Ordinary Tsarina’ that first launched the rumor: “Based on preliminary data, Valeri Gerasimov was killed in an attack on Crimea. He was in a command post near Sevastopol at the time.” The message was taken offline a little later, but in the meantime speculations also came from other quarters. Some Ukrainian media, among others, reported the news, albeit with the nuance that nothing has yet been confirmed.
If rumors are true, Gerasimov was killed on Thursday in a series of rocket attacks by Ukraine on Russia’s border regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula. “This was the biggest attack in recent times,” the governor of Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city, said afterwards. He added that the Russian army had managed to repel all attacks.
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Valeri Gerasimov’s name has also regularly appeared in the media. Not only because he is (or was?) Chief of Staff of the Russian Army and commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, but also because of his enmity with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the paramilitary Wagner Group, who died in August. The fact that Prigozhin rebelled in June 2023 and headed for Moscow with his militia had a lot to do with his dissatisfaction with the performance of Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Gerasimov was last seen in public on December 29, when he presented awards to soldiers who helped “liberate” Marinka, in the occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin has not yet responded to the rumors of his death. For Vladimir Putin, the loss of his general would be a heavy blow, because Gerasimov is considered his right-hand man and one of his closest allies. Ukrainian authorities have also not yet confirmed whether Gerasimov was indeed in the attacked command post, let alone whether he was killed.