War in Ukraine: – Putin’s dead generals

The Ukrainian resistance has claimed the lives of many of Putin’s most decorated generals since the invasion last February.

– Many good leaders were lost

Some senior Russian military commanders have been moved directly to the front lines to fill gaps and supervise operations on the ground.

– They have lost a lot of valuable expertise, leaving many departments without any designated department. The Russians clearly felt the loss of so many high-ranking generals, Arne Baard Dalhaug tells Dagbladet.

The retired lieutenant general and former chief of defense staff believes it is no coincidence that Ukrainian forces primarily go after officers when they attack.

Ukraine has managed to kill an astonishing number of Russian generals, and the reason is that the Russians do not have the ability to delegate responsibility. And so they end up sending their generals away to the front lines. He adds that this increases the possibility of them being shot and killed, something you can see the results of now.

Western-backed Ukrainian intelligence has a very good picture of what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, but he believes it primarily tells us how dysfunctional the Russian leadership is.

– They send generals on the front lines to make decisions, and they lack the adaptability that modern warfare requires. Conditions on the battlefield are constantly changing, and with generals as bulletproofs, this becomes a problem. First, many generals die, and second, decisions take a very long time, Dalhoug says.

Issuing a large electronic signature

He points out that what makes high-ranking officers easier to eliminate than others is that they have a fairly large electronic signature. They cannot command military units without a radio and telephone, and can therefore be identified more easily.

“Managers have to communicate with their subdivisions one way or another, and through that communication you issue an electronic signature that in the next round results in you getting a missile in your head from a drone,” says Dalhoug.

In addition, the Ukrainians can eliminate them with snipers, or fire artillery into the area where the electronic signals come from. If they did that, there was a good chance that they would be able to eliminate the top leaders.

Attack on Sevastopol

This is exactly what Ukrainian forces did.

In late September, Ukraine claimed that the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Viktor Sokolov, was killed in an attack on the fleet headquarters in Crimea. Later, a video surfaced purporting to show Sokolov still alive, but no one could say for sure whether he was alive or actually killed.

In an exclusive interview with the Kyiv Post last week, Ukrainian Defense Intelligence representative Andrey Yusov said that several Russian generals had been eliminated, but Admiral Sokolov’s fate remained unclear.

The attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol led to the death of 33 other officers.

Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was one of the first to die when he was shot and killed by a sniper in March 2022. He was reportedly killed in the battle for Hostomil Airport, about 30 miles outside the capital, Kiev.

Just a few days later, Vitaly Gerasimov, one of Putin’s top officers, was killed in Kharkiv. Gerasimov received a medal for “invading” the disputed territory of Crimea in 2014, and also received medals after commanding forces in Syria and in the second war against Chechnya.

Russia received another heavy blow days later when Ukraine reported the death of Major General Putin Andrei Kolesnikov. By then, a desperate Putin had officially lost 11 military commanders and three high-ranking generals.

Zelensky’s forces said shortly afterwards that Major General Oleg Mittyev was killed in the storming of Mariupol, along with seven members of Russia’s elite team. Adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko published a photo of the body of the decorated military officer.

Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev, another senior general who commanded Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army, also died in the same battle on March 24, 2022.

In mid-March, a fifth Russian general, Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev, died during fighting in Chernobyevka, near the southern city of Kherson. The military commander is believed to have been killed at the Russian-controlled airport in Kherson, which had come under Ukrainian attacks in the previous days.

Two of Putin’s top commanders were also killed when Ukrainian forces retook Chuhuzhev. Dmitry Safronov and Denis Glebov, who commanded various brigades in the Russian Armed Forces, died in battle in early July 2022.

Commander Konstantin Zhizhevsky reportedly died in action in Ukraine around the same time, and Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Agarkov also died on 9 March 2022.

As the war entered its second month, Putin’s forces were dealt another blow on March 31 when Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Kornik, 39, chief of staff of the 40th Engineer Regiment, was killed. His battalion was injured while building a pontoon bridge in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine.

By then, Russia had lost 20 of its top military commanders, and the desperate tyrant Putin’s conquest was, according to many, beginning to falter.

The New York Times Reports indicate that nearly 500,000 fighters have been killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine since it broke out on February 24, 2022.

The authorities in the United States of America are the ones who gave the newspaper these numbers.

They wrote that it is difficult to estimate the number of dead and wounded because they suspect that authorities in Russia routinely under-report the number. The Ukrainian authorities also do not announce their official figures on victims.

On the Russian side, estimates indicate that the number of dead is approximately 120,000, and the number of wounded is between 170,000 and 180,000. On the Ukrainian side, the numbers were much lower, with 70,000 people killed and between 100,000 and 120,000 injured. In addition, there are many civilians killed.

It is also uncertain how many senior military leaders have been killed under Vladimir Putin. The above list covers many of the most important generals, but it is probably not complete.