The former commander of the Russian forces invading Ukraine, General Serhii Surovkin, was detained on suspicion of supporting the Wagner mercenary rebellion, The Moscow Times wrote on Wednesday evening, citing two sources close to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Officially, the ministry did not comment on this information.
“The situation with him was not “okay” for the authorities. I can’t say anything else,” one of the sources commented on the reason for the arrest.
“In the context of Prigozhin, one gets the impression that he [Surovkin] chose a side [mercenarilor Wagner] and they caught him by the “balls,” said a second source.
When asked where the general is now, she replied: “We do not comment on this information even on our internal channels.”
Several sources in Russia talk about Surovikin’s arrest
Previously, rumors about Surovkin’s arrest were reported by military blogger Volodymyr Romanov. According to him, the general was arrested on June 25, the day after the uprising.
According to his information, Surovkin was taken to Lefortovo, the notorious FSB prison in Moscow.
However, one of the sources cited by The Moscow Times claims that it is not clear whether Surovkin knew about the uprising that Prigozhin was planning, but that “he did not behave too submissively when he was given the task of reading the text in front of his eyes.” cameras and situational control, he was too bold about the management.”
The cited source claims that due to such behavior it was possible to create the impression that Surovkin is part of the “Prygogin coalition”.
The editor-in-chief of the radio station “School of Moscow” Oleksiy Venediktov states that Surovikin has not been in touch with his family for 3 days, allegedly confirming the information of the blogger Romanov.
The Kremlin denied the arrest of the general
The American edition of The New York Times wrote earlier on Wednesday that Surovikin would betray Putin by supporting a military coup planned by the mercenary leader Wagner, but American journalists did not write anything about the arrest of the general.
Asked about it Wednesday during a daily news conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the NYT report.
“Now there will be many different speculations, gossip and so on around these events. I think this is such an example,” Peskov said, TASS reports.
US officials told The News York Times that General Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russian military operations in Ukraine, may have known in advance of Prigozhin’s planned uprising.
Current and former US officials have speculated that Prigozhin would not have launched the rebellion if he did not believe that others in key positions would support him, leading them to believe that the mercenary leader had internal support to carry out the rebellion.
Surovikin, who was nicknamed “General Armageddon” by the Russian media, was appointed the overall head of operations in Ukraine in October 2022, but at the beginning of the year he was replaced in this position by the chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov.
Surovikin was considered close to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who repeatedly praised him, while he left only criticism for the military command in Moscow for months.
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Source: Hot News
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