Hours after Russian paramilitary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin began a short march on Moscow last month, the country’s internal security service, the FSB, detained several high-ranking military personnel, including General Sergei Surovykin, head of the Aerospace Directorate, people familiar with the situation said. . The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

General Surovikin is detained and interrogated in Moscow, other commanders are detained, suspended or released, sources say.

The Kremlin’s efforts to weed out officers suspected of disloyalty are more extensive than the public has known, according to the sources, who said at least 13 senior officers had been detained for questioning, some later released, and 15 suspended or fired.

Sources told the WSJ that Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon” for his indiscriminate bombings in Syria, is currently being held and questioned in Moscow. He has not yet been charged, but it is suspected that he knew about Prigozhin’s plans for the uprising, even if the general did not personally participate in the June 24 uprising. Other Western publications, including the Financial Times, reported on Surovikin’s detention.

“The detention of these officers shows attempts to clear the ranks of those who can no longer be trusted,” the source said.

Andriy Kartapolov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said in a video circulating on Russian social media this week that Surovikin was resting and “currently unavailable.”

Surovikin’s deputy, Colonel-General Andriy Yudin, and Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence, Lieutenant-General Volodymyr Alekseev, were also detained, but later released. They have been suspended, their movements are restricted and they are under surveillance, one of the people the WSJ spoke to said.

Other well-known figures detained include Colonel-General Mykhailo Mizintev, who used to be the deputy minister of defense but joined Wagner Prigozhin’s group at the end of April.

Surovikin was last seen in a video published on June 23. He looked confused and held a pistol in his right hand, begging Prigozhin and his soldiers to abandon the mutiny.

PUTIN CANNOT GET RID OF SHOIG AND GERASIMOV

After the uprising in late June, the Kremlin began dismantling Wagner, a key Russian fighting force in Ukraine, responsible for the recent seizure of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and a tool of Russian power projection in the Middle East and Africa. . On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had seized hundreds of tanks, grenade launchers and artillery pieces from Wagner, as well as 20,000 assault rifles and other small arms and 2,500 tons of ammunition. If that’s true, it’s likely that all of Wagner’s remaining units in Russia or Ukraine have been largely disarmed, the WSJ notes.

Prigozhin’s rebellion, although crushed before he and the armed convoy reached Moscow, represented the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin in his 23 years in power and caused unrest among the Russian elite as well as the armed forces.

The demands of the leader of the paramilitary formation included the dismissal of Defense Minister Serhiy Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov. Both appeared in videos released by the Ministry of Defense after the failed uprising. Some Russian military analysts suggest that keeping Shoigu and Gerasimov allows the Kremlin to create cohesion among the armed forces.

“It is precisely because of the events of June 24 that it is impossible for Putin to get rid of Shoigu and Gerasimov in the near future,” emphasizes Mykhailo Barabanov, a senior researcher at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (Moscow). brain center

WHAT ROLE WAS SUROVIKIN?

While Wagner’s soldiers fought on the front lines in Bakhmut, Prigozhin repeatedly accused the Moscow military leadership of refusing to provide his soldiers with the necessary ammunition. But he consistently supported General Surovikin, who was appointed to command Russian troops in Ukraine in October, and was replaced by Gerasimov himself at the beginning of the year. As commander of the operation in Ukraine, Surovikin introduced a new tactic aimed at degrading Ukraine’s power grid and other critical infrastructure through missile strikes.

Sources told the WSJ that after the riot, Prigozhin Surovikin was not held in solitary confinement, but was questioned repeatedly as investigators looked into what role, if any, he played in the uprising. According to sources, Surovikin may be released when Putin decides how to deal with the aftermath of the mutiny.

The Kremlin’s position was complicated by the fact that Prigozhin nevertheless remained in Russia, despite public assurances that he would leave for Belarus with his fighters according to an agreement between Putin and Prigozhin, allegedly with the mediation of the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

The Kremlin said last week that Putin met with Prigozhin and other Wagner commanders for nearly three hours in late June, days after the uprising ended, in what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called a show of loyalty to Putin.

When asked late last month whether Putin trusted Surovikin, Peskov said only that the Russian president, who is the commander-in-chief of the army, cooperates with the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff. Then Surovikina’s daughter told local media that her father had not been arrested and was working as usual. His wife, however, said Wednesday night that he had not returned from work, according to a person close to her.

However, Surovikin was only one of many detained officers who had ties to Wagner. Alekseev had long-standing ties to Wagner, but released a video in the early stages of his rebellion asking him to resign. Mizintsev, also known as the “Butcher of Mariupol” because he led Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian city with heavy bombing of civilian areas, was ousted as deputy minister in charge of logistics earlier this year and joined Wagner in several months before that. rebellion.