EIt sounds like an announcement of an open rebellion: At the slightest threat to General Mikhail Teplinsky’s freedom or life, the 7th Guards Air Assault Division will stand like a wall around its commander, says an alleged soldier of the unit in an audio message distributed on Telegram . “We are very determined. Until then, we leave our positions and come to the aid of our leader.” This threat is in response to rumors that the commander of the Russian airborne troops is about to be arrested. Whether they have a core of truth is unclear. There is also no proof of the authenticity of the recording.
What is certain, however, is that the news was hotly debated in the Telegram channels of Russian war bloggers. Some of them suspect that the recording could have been circulated by the Ukrainian secret service to increase unrest in the Russian troops. However, it is already big.
Since the riot of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner troupe on June 24, there have been increasing signs of a split in the military leadership and growing discontent within the troupe. Prigozhin’s accusations that the Moscow military bureaucracy is incompetent, corrupt, shows no consideration for the soldiers and does not want victory in the war seem to resonate with the troops.
Have other commanders been deposed?
It’s almost completely unreported in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media, but it’s brewing in the Telegram channels of radical supporters of the war against Ukraine. Last week, the commander of the 58th Army, General Ivan Popov, was dismissed after allegedly criticizing Chief of Staff Valeriy Gerasimov in a meeting. Popov later accused the military leadership of “stabbing the soldiers in the back” by “treacherously and vilely” beheading the troops at a difficult time. Popov is said to have been transferred to Syria in the meantime.
In the days that followed, news circulated of more firings of combatant commanders. “Judging from the list of commanders who have already been ousted (and only the most capable ones are ousted), our General Staff does not consider the greatest danger to be the enemy, but the undermining of its own authority, which – let’s be honest – it hasn’t had among the army people for a long time has more,” writes blogger Yuriy Podolyaka, who has more than 2.8 million subscribers on Telegram. He “very much fears” another revolt like that of the Wagner troupe: “The problems that led to this were not only not solved in the past month, but have deepened significantly.”
Shoygu and Gerasimov hit back
According to the anonymous Telegram channel WTchK-OGPU, which also has a wide reach with almost 760,000 subscribers and presumably has sources among high-ranking military officials, this fear is also circulating in the Defense Ministry and in the Kremlin. General Popov’s speech caused a “chain reaction” among those generals who were not “parquet generals” to no longer submit to Chief of Staff Gerasimov. Therefore, there is a risk of the army losing control. A dismissal of Gerasimov is not considered, “because it only provokes the development of an appetite for demands from the commanders, which inevitably leads to a repetition of the Prigozhin scenario.”
In the months leading up to his uprising, Prigozhin repeatedly attacked Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu with foul language, calling for their removal and even their shooting. Since the riot, Shoygu and Gerasimov have apparently been trying to rid the army of officers whose loyalty they doubt.
Their authority is undermined: Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu (left) and Chief of Staff Valeriy Gerasimov respond with a wave of purges.
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Image: dpa
Conflicts in the army leadership that have been smoldering for some time are presumably escalating. An example of this are the rumors of an arrest of the commander of the airborne troops, which prompted the alleged announcement of a revolt by the 7th Guards Air Assault Division over the weekend. As early as January, several war bloggers reported that General Teplinsky had been deposed for refusing to send paratroopers to certain death.
The Ministry of Defense denied the dismissal, but Teplinsky himself – about whom Prigozhin publicly spoke positively – fueled these rumors, saying in a video address on Defenders of the Fatherland Day on February 23 that it “had turned out that way.” that he has not been at the front for more than a month, to which he would like to return. He appealed to the troop commanders: “Take care of your soldiers. Don’t pay for capturing villages and hills with soldiers’ lives!”
However, according to the American think tank Institute for the Study of War, Teplinsky’s fate also helped to encourage commanders to oppose the Shoygu/Gerasimow duo and to address their concerns directly to Putin. By mobilizing veterans’ organizations in March, Teplinsky is said to have contributed to Prigozhin’s complaints about the poor treatment of the Wagner mercenaries by the army leadership being brought to the attention of Putin. It didn’t do him any harm at the time – on the contrary: in mid-April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who usually refers Russian journalists to the Ministry of Defense when they have questions about the army, personally confirmed that Teplinsky would remain in charge of the airborne troops. The generals had to take this as a sign of Putin’s favor while bypassing Shoigus.