On the evening of 23 June, two videos recorded in the same room and at the same table reported two appeals, with very similar contents, by two high-ranking Russian officers. One was from the lieutenant general Vladimir AleksyevFirst Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, who told PMC Chief Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhinwho does not have the authority to issue orders to the armed forces: “This is a coup d’etat, come to your senses!”, he would say, addressing him as you. The other was the deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine Even Sergei Surovikdubbed by the media “General Armageddon” after the bombings on Aleppo in Syriawhich he urged PMC Wagner to maintain its positions and not to revolt against its allies: “Stop the columns, bring them back to their permanent deployment points”. After keeping his left hand hidden for the almost 140 seconds of the video, the officer raised it by hitting the table with his index finger, in a gesture that could indicate to the listener the action to take or simply to exclude that she had been injured as a result of torture.
Of the former we know that he appeared at Rostov-on-Don on 24 June, together with the Deputy Minister of Defence, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, and to Prigozhin, who explained to them the reasons for criticizing the Ministry of Defense in a video posted by a Telegram channel close to PMC Wagner. The scene appeared decidedly surreal to everyone, the tone being calm despite the evidence of bloody fights and the march on Moscow then in full swing. Since then, the two have gone missing in the Russian media. And both had in the past had close relationships with the head of PMC Wagner: Alexsyev was the man in charge of relations between the armed forces and the companies of “volunteers” engaged in the field in Ukraine e in Syria. Yet you will never find a complaint from Prigozhin directed against the military in charge of maintaining relations between him and the duo Shoigu-Gerasimov, for months instead the object of the barbs of the former “Putin’s cook”. The other, Surovikin, had been the commander of all Russian forces from 8 October 2022 until his replacement by Gerasimov himself last January and had supported the use of PMC Wagner in the only battles not lost by the Russians in recent months , solder e Bakhmut.
Who is Surovikin, to whom the media want to label a rebel general? In the public space he appeared for the first time in August 1991, when he, in the rank of captain and acting commander of a motorized rifle battalion of the Taman division, took part in the events of the coup by opening fire on anti-Soviet demonstrators. As a result of this you spent several months in prisonwithout ever being convicted. Since June 2004, Surovikin has commanded the 42nd Guards Division stationed in Chechnyathe main formation of the army, which was permanently deployed to the front: from there he flew to become head of the main operations department of the Major state and in 2010 chief of staff of the region Volga-Urals and later of the central military districts. In 2012, he rose to the top of the Eastern Military District. In the following years he participated in the reform of the Russian army and a lot has been spent in the creation of a new body in the structure of the army: the military police. It was he who was to become head of this establishment: instead, he was sent in Syria where he led the Russian group, carrying out the task of supporting the Syrian government forces against the various rebel souls. To carry out his task quickly and well, he had no qualms about hitting civilian targets and razing them to the ground Aleppo.
To make his past obscure we find many episodes, always erased with a clean slate by the Russian authorities: apart from having fired on civilians in Moscathen there are the arms traffickingwith the court setting aside the charges for exonerative circumstances, the 1994 murder case of Dmitry Kholodova correspondent of Moskovsky Komsomoletsfor whose death none of the military suspects went to trial, the disappearance in February 2000 in Alkhan-Kala of Khadzhimurad Yandiev, a militant wounded and taken prisoner following whose disappearance our career took off like a rocket. It is no coincidence that Sergei Surovikin received the rank of army general on August 16, 2021, exactly on the anniversary of the August putsch: we are talking about a man who fits perfectly into Putin’s system of power.
If it is legitimate to doubt the leakage from the Cnn which indicate him as a high-level – albeit not visibly – member of PMC Wagnerit is undeniable that in the last weeks of the battle of Bakhmut Prigozhin himself had asked for the appointment of Surovikin as a liaison between the armed forces and PMC Wagner with the aim of improve supplies e complete the conquest of the inhabited center and that in statements never really kept secret he had hoped for his appointment as Shoigu’s replacement in the defense ministry. After all, the then commander of the Russian forces, engaged in futile and vicious bombing of Kiev and Ukrainian infrastructure soon after withdrawing from Kherson, had come to appreciate the fine level of training and discipline of PMC Wagner personnel during the Battle of Bakhmut, so different from the Defense Ministry forces. For the first time since the clashes between the Soviets and the Nazis, even militiamen “stuffed” with narcotic substances were seen in Europe employed as truppe suicidewhen insufficiently trained or motivated to fight: a concept of “cannon fodder” useful not only to increase numbers for the purpose of impressing the adversary, something in which the Russians have always been unsurpassed in Europe, but also to create calculated tactical damage to the enemy. And indeed these thousands of wretches – often former inmates affected by serious pathologies – have often served to consume ammunition or to discover positions of the Ukrainians, stunned in front of men who continued to advance as if they did not feel the pain if seriously injured.
In short, Prigozhin had shown a remarkable ability in managing troops, but also in weaving “unofficial” relations with Ukraine, managing prisoner exchanges and denying the Kremlin propaganda about the reasons for the war. Finally, at the end of April, the circle of relations between PMC Wagner and the Russian military leaders was closed, with the appointment of Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev to the role of first deputy commander of Dmitry Utkin, the leader of the “Wagnerians” in the field. This occurred following the dismissal of Mizintsev himself as deputy defense minister in charge of logistics, replaced by the deputy head of the National Guard Alexei Kuzmenkova “recommended” by GRU e FSBin short, of the world from which it comes Putin. Mizintsev is not just any soldier: he is the man who takes Mariupol, Severodonetsk e Lysichansk won the only three battles of 2022 for the Russians, albeit at a huge cost in terms of human lives and means, earning the nickname of “Mariupol butcher”. What became of him and his fellow “butchers”, Surovikin in the lead, is not known.