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A Russian general has said he was dismissed for challenging the army’s top brass over their handling of the invasion of Ukraine and accused them of betraying the troops amid Kyiv’s counteroffensive.
The unusually public criticism is a sign that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion force, remain the target of anger among parts of the military establishment after the Wagner group launched a failed mutiny to remove them last month.
In an audio recording posted by a Russian prominent lawmaker on the social media app Telegram on Wednesday, Ivan Popov, the former commander of Russia’s 58th army, said the army’s senior leaders had sacked him after he gave a dire assessment of the situation at the front.
Popov’s four-minute message to his troops suggests tensions remain high over Vladimir Putin’s disastrous invasion, even after the Russian president reached an eleventh-hour deal to end Wagner’s mutiny and kept Shoigu and Gerasimov in their posts.
The general said he had asked army leaders to rotate frontline units, which he said were sustaining heavy losses because of a lack of counter-artillery systems and artillery reconnaissance.
Popov said unnamed “senior bosses” had “evidently sensed some sort of deadly danger in me” and sacked him.
“As many regimental commanders said today, Ukraine’s armed forces couldn’t break through our front lines, but our senior boss hit us from the rear, treacherously beheading the army at the most difficult and tense moment,” Popov added.
It was not immediately clear whether Popov was referring to his own dismissal or the fate of other senior Russian commanders who are believed to have harboured similar grudges against Shoigu and Gerasimov for months, with some reportedly losing their jobs for questioning the army’s tactics.
The MP who posted the recording, Andrei Gurulyov, is himself a former commander of the 58th army who has said he remains close to Russia’s armed forces and publicly confirmed the death of a lieutenant general earlier this week.
Andrei Turchak, secretary of Putin’s United Russia party, said Popov’s message had been posted in private chats for men of the 58th army and not intended for publication.
“Let the fact that the ‘lawmaker’ Gurulyov got it somehow and turned it into a political show be on his conscience,” Turchak wrote on Telegram. “Ivan’s conscience is clear. The Motherland can be proud of commanders like him.”
Senior lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov said in an audio message that Popov’s message had been “heard and seen, and the people who need to do it will take measures”.
Before Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s spat with the army span out of control in the spring, the warlord said several prominent generals sympathised with the paramilitaries and publicly thanked them for supplying the group.
The most senior of them, deputy invasion commander Sergei Surovikin, was detained last month in the wake of Prigozhin’s mutiny and has not been seen since. Kartapolov, said on Wednesday that Surovikin was “resting” and “not available right now,” without elaborating.
Grey Zone, a channel on Telegram affiliated with Wagner, was the first to report on Popov’s dismissal before Gurulyov posted the audio recording.
It said Gerasimov had accused Popov of “disinformation and panic-spreading” and sacked him after the general threatened to make efforts to “get through to the president”.
The Kremlin and Russia’s defence ministry have not commented on Popov’s apparent dismissal.
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