Russia’s top brass pays heavy price for Putin’s invasion

A Russian commander who boasted that the war in Ukraine would be over within hours has become the seventh general to die in the conflict.

A Russian commander who boasted that the war in Ukraine would be over within hours has become the seventh general to die in the conflict.

Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev was killed in a Ukrainian strike on an airfield near Kherson, a Russian-occupied city north of Crimea.

On the fourth day of the invasion, General Rezantsev, commander of a military district headquartered in the southern Russian city of Stavropol, told Russian soldiers that their campaign to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine would achieve victory in a matter of hours, according to intercepted communications released by the Ukrainian military.

The call between a demoralised Russian soldier and his commanding officer was published on social media by the Ukrainian security service last week. In the conversation, the Russian soldier paints a bleak picture of life on the frontline, saying that his unit has been subjected to friendly fire and that half of his forces have frostbitten feet.

“Rezantsev is in charge here,” the soldier says. “We’ve only met him once since we came here, that was four days after we arrived. Do you know what he told us? He said, ‘It’s no secret that there are only a few hours left until this special operation is over’. Well, we are still counting down those hours.”

In an attempt to bolster the morale of Russian troops, generals have been pressured into travelling to the frontline of the conflict, putting themselves at risk of Ukrainian ambushes, according to Western officials.

The Ukrainians have now killed seven Russian generals – six from the conventional army and one from the Chechen special forces. President Vladimir Putin has fired an eighth, Vladislav Yershov, and placed him under house arrest.

The US has been unable to determine whether a single commander has been appointed to run the invasion. Defence experts have suggested that much of the chaos in the Russian assault could be explained by the lack of clear leadership.

There are rumours that Mr Putin has become frustrated at the progress of the war and lashed out at the two men supposed to be responsible for the campaign. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was forced to make a brief appearance on Russian state TV on Thursday after disappearing from public view for almost two weeks. General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, has not been seen at all in that time.

In a further sign that all might not be well in the Kremlin, the Pentagon has said that it had been unable to reach Mr Shoigu and General Gerasimov since the start of the war. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not been able to speak to their Russian counterparts through the usual diplomatic channels.

Communications between the world’s two foremost nuclear powers tend to be kept open to prevent accidents, but Mr Austin and General Milley have been unable to reach the pair, who would ordinarily be running the campaign.

The Times