The general disappeared into trouble

Sergei Surovikin has not appeared in public for several days. What can happen to him now?

The commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine and, in fact, the second person after Sergey Shoigu in this war, General Sergei Surovikin disappeared on June 24. The last time he publicly made a video message to Evgeny Prigozhin. After that, there were reports of the arrest of the general, then about the detention and interrogations due to sympathy for him from Evgeny Prigozhin in several telegram channels. The new newspaper Europe tried to figure out what was happening to the general after the rebellion.

The commander of the united group of troops in the war in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, last appeared in public on the night of June 23 to 24. Then he, together with the deputy head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, turned to the Wagner PMC with an appeal to stop and “submit to the will of the president”. Judging by the background on which Alekseev and Surovikin were recorded, they could be in one place.

At seven in the morning of the same day, a new video appeared , now from the Grey Zone channel associated with Evgeny Prigozhin and PMC Wagner. It was recorded at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, which Prigozhin had already captured by that time. According to Telegram channel, in the video of Prigozhin “negotiations” with the deputy minister of defense Yunus-Buck Evkurov and thereby Vladimir Alekseev, who, according to Grey Zone, is “one of the“ creators ”of the“ group of Wagner ””. Surovikina is not on the video.

On June 26, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the heads of law enforcement agencies and the head of the presidential administration Anton Vaino, but Surovikin was not again at this meeting. The general was not shown during Putin’s speech to the security forces and military personnel in the Cathedral Square, where he thanked them for the alleged suppression of the rebellion.

On June 27, The New York Times, citing his own sources in American intelligence, said that Sergei Surovikin could know about the preparation of the rebellion Evgeny Prigozhin. According to the publication, the Russian leadership wanted to find out whether General Sergei Surovikin Prigozhin helped “plan actions”.

A day later, the Investigative Center “Dossier” said that General Surovikin and even more than 30 Russian generals and officials since 2017 have been honorary members of the Wagner PMC. “He was given a personal cable of PMCs under the number M-3744,” the investigators write .

According to Financial Times, nicknamed “General Armageddon” for massive bombing in Syria, General Surovikin “was a favorite of the influential community of military bloggers playing for the war”. The publication calls the commander of the Russian army in the war in Ukraine "friendly Prigozhin."

The creator of the Wagner PMC Evgeny Prigozhin, along with the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov and the truth in October last year supported the appointment of Surovikin as the commander of the united group of troops. Prigozhin called him "the most competent commander in the Russian army." Prigozhin also recalled the fact that Sergey Surovikin in 1991 participated in the August coup on the side of the GKChP. “Surovikin is the officer who, without hesitation, having received an order, got into the tank and rushed to save his country,” the businessman “Kommersant” quotes the commentary.

On June 28, information about the detention of Sergei Surovikin appeared in the pro-government telegram channel "Romanov Light", which is conducted by military commissar Vladimir Romanov. He stated that the general was allegedly “taken to Lefortovo” on June 25, that is, after Prigozhin agreed to stop his “march of justice”. Then, information began to appear in the telegram channels about the arrest of Colonel General Andrei Yudin, Deputy Surovikin.

On the same day, URA.RU reported this, saying that the journalists managed to contact Yudin - he was at home. At the same time, that General Surovikin “does not get in touch with his family for three days” and that “his security is not answered,” said the former editor -in -chief of Echo of Moscow, Alexei Venediktov.

On the morning of June 29, Venediktov wrote in his telegram channel that Surovikin’s deputy Andrei Yudin was still dismissed, but not arrested. According to the journalist, there is still Surovikin himself at large. “It is no secret for the military or the Kremlin’s acute confrontation between the Minister Shoigu and the head of the General Staff with Surovikin. There is a direct opportunity to remove a competitor/rival in the eyes of the president and in the eyes of the military (Surovikin is definitely more popular in the troops). <...> In general, on the one hand, cleaning the army leadership after the rebellion, but on the other, the elementary destruction of the opponent is like two fingers .... " - So Venediktov comments on rumors about the arrest of the head of the General Staff (spelling and punctuation are preserved).

The conflict between Shoigu and Surovikin most likely began long before the war in Ukraine. In 2011, Surovikin claimed the post of head of the new army unit, whose idea belonged to the general, the military police. This body was supposed to obtain the rights of operational-search activities, that is, the opportunity to initiate and investigate cases regarding irregularities in the army. Formally, the main task of the new structure was to be the fight against “grandfathers”, however, the presence of the authority of the investigation would potentially make the unit one of the most influential in the army.

In 2012, Surovikin was supposed to head the military police, but the chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky opposed , whose department would lose the authority to create a military police in the original idea. The prosecutor recalled the criminal case, which in 1995, Surovikin was found guilty of "aiding in the acquisition and sale, as well as wearing firearms and ammunition without appropriate permission." As Kommersant wrote , after the beginning of this conflict, Surovikin decided to remove from the post that he "created an actually for himself for a year."

After Sergey Shoigu replaced Anatoly Serdyukov as Minister of Defense, he actually rewritten the law “On the Military Police”, developed by the initiative group led by Surovikin, depriving such a police of authority, for example, the opportunity to hold operational-search and investigative measures. By that time, Surovikin was already removed from the work of this law enforcement agency and, as it is believed , was reduced, returning "to the troops" to the post of first deputy commander of the Eastern Military District. A source in the administration of the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov, who is called close to Sergey Shoigu, claims that it was the conflict around the military police that became the beginning of the enmity between Shoigu and Surovikin.

“Whatever the real role of Surovikin, Shoigu may have a temptation to portray him with a conspirator. Sympathetic is very easy to turn into conspirators ",

- said the senior researcher at the Berlin Center for Carnegie in the Study of Russia and Eurasia Tatyana Stanovaya, the newspaper Financial Times.

“So far, the situation with Surovikin recalls what happened at the beginning of the war with Ukraine with the head of the fifth Service of the FSB, General Sergei conversation. The fifth service is a special division of Lubyanka, inside of which there are departments working in the post -Soviet space, including in Ukraine. Under the guidance of the conversation, information about moods in Ukraine was supposed to be collected and agents recruit. After the failure of the blitzkrieg, many observers seemed to be wasted money and misinformed Putin, and therefore it would be logical if Putin upset by this begins to clean. It was against this background that rumors about the arrest of the conversation began to appear, ”says Mikhail Komin, a political scientist, an invited expert of the European Council for International Affairs. - Either it was a journalistic Wishful Thinking, or the security forces specially allowed such information as to see what channels this is pouring and calculating who it is hosted by them ... In the end it turned out that nothing terrible happened to the conversation. He later appeared at one of the public events in the previous status of the head of the fifth service. Probably, as he held his post, he occupies. The same thing is happening now with Surovikin. It seems to us that the system is so [arrests and cleaning] and should respond to the rebel that has happened, but Putin, who makes such personnel decisions, may have other ideas

Today, the detention of Surovikin reported with reference to her own sources and the publication The Moscow Times. According to one of the sources, the general was detained "in the context of Prigozhin." “Apparently, he [Surovikin] chose the side of Prigogin during the uprising, and they took him by the eggs,” the source said. At the same time, the publication does not specify in what status - the accused or witness - is Surovikin.

Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who was asked about the fate of General Surovikin, transferred journalists to the Ministry of Defense.