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All The Kremlin's Men: Russian Officials Drop Out Of Sight, Suggesting Post-Mutiny Purges

(Article text Copyright © 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036. – rferl.org – Mike Eckel - June 30, 2023 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/all-the-kremlins-men-russian-officials-drop-out-of-sight-post-mutiny/32484195.html)

The guessing game in Moscow these days: Where are they?

Days after a mutiny by the mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, who sent thousands of his fighters racing toward the Russian capital, a growing number of prominent commanders and public figures have disappeared from public view.

Rattled by the biggest challenge he has faced in his 23 years as the country's preeminent political figure, President Vladimir Putin has suggested he would root out those inside and outside the military people who have allied themselves, quietly or overtly, with Prigozhin.

He may also be seeking to sideline those who let it happen or whose conduct of Russia's war in Ukraine has made them liabilities in his eyes.

"The armed insurgency by the Wagner private military company has become a pretext for a massive purge in the ranks of the Russian armed forces," said Rybar, а Telegram channel linked to a former Defense Ministry official.

The scope and scale of the purported purge is unclear, as is the depth and breadth of support for Prigozhin in the Defense Ministry, security agencies, and elsewhere. Some of those who have faded from view may simply be lying low -- under orders or at their own initiative -- in the hope the crisis will blow over.

Tatyana Stanovaya, a longtime Russian political analyst, cautioned that it is unclear whether there will be widespread dismissals and a major reshuffling of Putin's closest advisers or other influential figures.

"What distinguishes the current situation is Putin's progressive loss of initiative in dealing with domestic issues," she said in a post to Twitter. "His heightened emotional state makes him more susceptible to manipulation. We appear to be observing a new phase in Putin's regime, where his entourage is becoming more actively involved in shaping its trajectory."

Here's who's gone missing, and who has entered the limelight.

Sergei Surovikin

Dubbed "General Armageddon" by Russia's tabloids, General Sergei Surovikin is arguably -- after Prigozhin -- the person being most closely watched in the aftermath of the mutiny.

Currently commander of Russia's aerospace forces, Surovikin was appointed Russia's overall commander for the invasion of Ukraine by Putin last October.

At the time, the invasion was faltering; Ukrainian forces had stunned Russian troops with an offensive in the Kharkiv region, in the northeast. Surovikin ordered Russian forces to barrage Ukraine's electricity grid and civilian infrastructure with missiles. Under pressure from advancing Ukrainian troops, he also withdrew Russia's forces from the right bank of Dnieper River in the Kherson region, in the south.

Surovikin's appointment was championed by Prigozhin and other hard-line nationalists who pressed the Kremlin to wage an even more brutal campaign against Ukraine. He was viewed as a ruthless -- and effective -- commander overseeing Russia's intervention in the Syrian conflict in the late 2010s. Syria was where he and Prigozhin likely cemented their working relationship.

"Surovikin [is] a brute but also one of the more capable Russian commanders," Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London, said in a post to Twitter.

But Surovikin only lasted three months as overall commander for the war in Ukraine: He was demoted and replaced in January by General Valery Gerasimov, the longtime chief of the General Staff and a Putin loyalist.

In the initial hours of the mutiny, Surovikin appeared in a video imploring Wagner fighters to stand down. But Surovikin's behavior in the video raised questions about whether it might have been coerced.

Since the video, Surovikin has not been seen or heard from publicly.

The Financial Times, The Moscow Times, and the Associated Press reported that Surovikin was believed to have been detained by authorities investigating the mutiny -- though it was unclear whether, if true, he was being treated as a suspect or as a witness.

Aleksei Venediktov, the well-connected editor in chief of the now-closed radio station Ekho Moskvy, said in a post to Telegram on June 28 that Surovikin had not been in contact with his family for three days.

On June 29, the head of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission, a state-sanctioned agency that monitors jails and prisons, released a cryptic statement on Telegram that raised as many questions as it answered.

"My response is: He is not in Lefortovo or any other pretrial detention facility," Aleksei Melnikov said, referring to an infamous high-security Moscow prison where treason and espionage suspects are usually held.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

The last time Prigozhin was heard from was in an 11-minute audio message posted to his Telegram channel on the evening of June 26, nearly 48 hours after the purported resolution of the mutiny.

"We started our march because of injustice," he said. "Our goal was not to overthrow the existing regime and the legally elected government, which was said many times. We turned around so as not to shed Russian soldiers' blood."

But the audio message did not indicate where and when the recording was made or reveal Prigozhin's physical whereabouts.

Under the deal announced first by Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Prigozhin was to travel to Belarus, and his Wagner fighters would be allowed to go there as well or sign contracts to serve under the command of the Defense Ministry.

On June 27, Lukashenka claimed Prigozhin had arrived in Minsk, but there was no independent confirmation. Flight trackers showed a private jet registered to his company arriving in the Belarusian capital that day and returning to St. Petersburg on June 28, but it was unclear if he was on the jet for either leg.

Putin's harsh condemnation of the mutineers -- he called the effort a "betrayal" and a "stab in the back" -- suggested Prigozhin and his allies could face retribution: arrest or worse.

Russia's main domestic intelligence agency announced June 27 it was dropping its criminal investigation of the mutineers. However, the Kommersant newspaper, and several state-controlled news agencies, later reported that the investigation remained open.

Sergei Shoigu

One of Putin's closest and longest-serving confidants, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, 68, has been the recipient of lacerating criticism and vaguely racist insults from Prigozhin -- and other hard-line nationalists and military bloggers -- for his overall command of Russia's military during the Ukraine invasion.

Since at least last summer, when the Russian invasion visibly faltered, Prigozhin has repeatedly ripped into him by name, accusing him of depriving Wagner forces of the ammunition needed to fight in the now-obliterated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Shoigu's distrust of Prigozhin has been less visible. But in May, the Defense Ministry issued an order that would formally bring Wagner fighters under regular command, depriving the group of its quasi-autonomous force.

That was believed to be the last straw for Prigozhin, who resisted losing control of his military force.

In the wake of the mutiny, the Defense Ministry released a video of Shoigu inspecting Russian troops and awarding medals in an undisclosed location. The video appeared to have been recorded prior to the rebellion.

But Prigozhin's mutiny included his forces taking control of Russia's southern military command in the city of Rostov-on-Don, putting his troops in direct confrontation with Defense Ministry officers. Another video that circulated on Telegram early on June 24 showed Prigozhin meeting with a deputy defense minister, Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and the deputy chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev.

"We want to get the chief of the General Staff and Shoigu," Prigozhin said. "Until they are here, we are here, we are blocking the city of Rostov and moving toward Moscow."

"You believe everything you're doing right now is right. Is that right?" Yevkurov is seen asking Prigozhin in the video. "Absolutely right. We're saving Russia," Prigozhin responds.

That video was seen as a potential embarrassment for the two top military commanders, who have played key roles in the invasion.

Shoigu was shown on June 26 attending a Security Council meeting with Putin. A day later, Shoigu appeared at Kremlin ceremony, where Putin thanked soldiers and guards and those "who stood in the way of the mutineers."

He did not speak, and has given no media interviews since the mutiny.

Valery Gerasimov

Prigozhin's other punching bag has been Gerasimov, who as chief of the General Staff is Russia's top military officer.

Like Shoigu, Gerasimov, 67, is seen as loyal to Putin, a trait the Russian leader is known to value.

Known as a stolid, competent strategist, Gerasimov took a backseat role in the Ukraine operation for nearly all of 2022. But his position at the start of the full-scale invasion that February, and the major failures that Russian forces have experienced, stoked his critics' calls for his sacking.

Gerasimov ended up with the post of supreme Ukraine commander in January, when Putin demoted Surovikin. One Western expert characterized the shuffle as "infighting, power struggles, jealousy."

Gerasimov, who never had a very public media presence, has not been seen or heard from since before the mutiny. Unlike Shoigu, he did not appear at the June 27 Kremlin ceremony.

Viktor Zolotov

In contrast to the commanders and officials who have dropped out of sight in recent days, Viktor Zolotov, Putin's longtime bodyguard, dating back to his time in St. Petersburg, has seen his public presence -- relatively minimal in the past -- grow considerably.

Zolotov's loyalty to Putin earned him the appointment to be the first chief of the newly created National Guard in 2016. Seen as a sort of Praetorian Guard, the National Guard has grown into a 300,000-strong force whose responsibilities of ensuring internal stability within Russia dovetails with other units within the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, and other agencies.

Mainly a behind-the-scenes player, Zolotov's most visible public presence in recent years came in 2018, when he responded publicly to an investigation by opposition gadfly Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, which charged that nearly $30 million in procurement contracts had been stolen from the National Guard.

"I simply challenge you to a duel, in the ring, on the judo mat, anywhere, and I promise to make mincemeat of you," he said, addressing Navalny.

Zolotov, too, appeared at the Kremlin ceremony where Putin thanked units -- including some from the National Guard -- for their actions during the mutiny.

Unlike Shoigu, however, Zolotov spoke publicly to reporters after the event, where he announced his force would be receiving heavy weaponry, including tanks, to bolster their arsenal.

"We concentrated all our fists and forces precisely on the approaches to Moscow," Zolotov bragged to reporters. "Because if our forces had been scattered [Wagner] would have passed through them like a knife through butter."

"The rebels would not have taken Moscow," he said.

Other Names To Watch

Several other lower-key, non-marquee names are also worth watching for, as an indication where any potential purge might be moving:

Colonel General Andrei Yudin, Surovikin's deputy commander in the aerospace forces, was reported by Russian military bloggers to have been detained earlier this week. However, he later answered his phone when called by a reporter from the Kremlin-friendly news site Ura.ru: "I'm at home, on holiday."

Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev joined Wagner as a deputy commander in early May, days after being sacked as deputy defense minister.

Known as the "Butcher of Mariupol" for his role in the scorched-earth siege of the Ukrainian Azov Sea port city last year, Mizintsev had overseen logistics and supplies at the Defense Ministry, meaning he played an instrumental role in getting ammunition and supplies to Wagner, as well as regular troops.

The two officers who appeared in the early mutiny video alongside Prigozhin -- Yevkurov and Alekseyev -- have also been out of sight since last weekend.

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Key Words: Russia, Russian Military, Mutiny, Prigozhin, Wagner Group, Russo-Ukrainian War, Belarus, Lukashenka