A senior Russian officer has been killed in the Ukraine counteroffensive
Major-General Sergei Goryachev, chief of staff of Russia’s 35th Army, was killed in a missile attack in the Zaporizhia area, according to reports.
According to a Russian-backed figure in Ukraine, a top Russian officer was killed in a Ukrainian missile strike during Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russian soldiers.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in a part of the southern Zaporizhia region under Moscow’s control, said that Russian Major-General Sergei Goryachev, Chief of Staff of Russia’s 35th Army, was killed a day earlier on the Zaporizhia front, where Ukrainian forces have been retaking some territory.
The Russian Defence Ministry had no immediate confirmation of Goryachev’s death.
Goryachev, 52, was a renowned soldier. According to Reuters, he served in the Second Chechen War, commanded a tank brigade, controlled a Russian military facility in Tajikistan, and led Russian soldiers in Moldova’s breakaway pro-Russian province of Transdniestria.
If true, Goryachev’s killing represents the first Russian senior commander killed in Ukraine in almost a year. “Voenkor Z,” a Russian combat journalist and military blogger, broke the news of his death first.
“The army has lost one of its brightest and most effective military commanders, who combined the highest professionalism with personal courage,” Rogov said on his official Telegram channel. “Our heartfelt condolences to the deceased’s family and friends!”
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with 18 famous Russian military bloggers and war journalists in an effort to boost his narrative about the conflict’s favourable development in Ukraine.
The meeting, in which Putin stated that Ukraine had suffered “catastrophic” losses in its counteroffensive, comes amid “widespread discontent in the Russian information space” following drone attacks on Russian territory and border incursions by pro-Ukrainian but Russian armed groups, according to a leading war monitor on Wednesday.
The Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted in a daily briefing paper on the Ukraine war that Russian “milbloggers” who have been more critical of Putin’s war operations were not invited to the conversation.
“Putin is likely setting information conditions to prevent potential lines of attack against the Kremlin in the event of Russian failure” in Ukraine, the ISW said, adding that the Russian president may be aware “that committed pro-war figures” and the influence of military blogging are “his key constituency as he calls on the Russian public to prepare for a protracted war in Ukraine”.
“Putin’s engagement with these milbloggers may suggest that the Kremlin will increasingly rely on the wider ultranationalist community to maintain support for the war effort,” the ISW said.
According to the ISW, Russian claims of Major-General Goryachev’s death in the Zaporizhia area show that “some Russian senior military commander officials continue to operate close to the front line and remain vulnerable to accurate Ukrainian strikes.”
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