After the setback near Pokrovsk, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has begun dismissing generals in an effort to conceal his own mistakes and deception of the Kremlin, according to a report.
Journalist and blogger Volodymyr Zolkin said Gerasimov has started removing generals responsible for failures on the Pokrovsk axis.
According to Zolkin, the chief of the Russian General Staff is frantically looking for someone to blame for the failed offensive and for misleading Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Gerasimov, in a fever, is looking for someone to shift responsibility onto for the failures and for his own lies to Putin about having defeated, seized, and encircled everyone. Heads of generals are rolling,” Zolkin wrote.
He says the commander of the 51st Army, Lt. Gen. S. Milchakov, was removed from his post for failing to meet offensive objectives. Maj. Gen. Viktor Kindeyev was appointed acting commander. The commander of the 132nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, Col. Naymushin, was also dismissed due to significant personnel losses.
“Whether Gerasimov himself will be removed is unknown. To some extent this liar is even advantageous to us,” the journalist wrote.
A few days ago, after hearing what Zolkin describes as a misleading report from Gerasimov, Putin publicly claimed that Russian forces had encircled Pokrovsk. He even began inviting foreign journalists to Pokrovsk so they could “see” the encirclement for themselves.
However, there is no encirclement. Ukrainian military journalists, OSINT analysts and even pro-war Russian bloggers uniformly say Ukraine’s Forces are not encircled, and their logistics have not been cut. In effect, Zolkin argues, to justify failures to the Kremlin, Gerasimov invented a non-existent “encirclement” and left Putin looking highly awkward.
It now appears Gerasimov is trying to salvage his own reputation by purging subordinates and sidelining those who were unable to make his claims a reality.
