More than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine and many experts pictured the fall of the country as only days away, Ukraine added one more...
More than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine and many experts pictured the fall of the country as only days away, Ukraine added one more notch to its count of dead Russian generals.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Friday that Russian Lt. Gen. Yakov Rezantsev was killed near the southern city of Kherson, according to the BBC.
The BBC reported that Ukraine’s military, intercepted a communication from a Russian soldier that four days after the Feb. 24 invasion, Rezantsev said the war would end within hours.
Rezantsev commanded Russia’s 49th combined army. The BBC said he was the seventh Russian general to die in the invasion.
Ukrainian media said Rezantsev was killed at Chornobaivka airbase, according to Newsweek. The base was the site of a strike that killed Russian Lt. Gen. Andrei Mordvichev.
“Yakov Rezantsev is the second Russian lieutenant general to die in the war against Ukraine. Torn apart Georgian Abkhazia, bombed-out Syria and finally inglorious elimination in Ukraine. This is becoming a typical track record of Russian generals,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry tweeted.
The demise of Russian generals comes not as some a freak of chance. A report in The Wall Street Journal, based on a Ukrainian government source, said one military intelligence team tracks Russian officers.
A report in Foreign Policy said that communications issues and stalled advances are leading to generals taking up exposed, vulnerable positions.
“They’re struggling on the front line to get their orders through,” said an unidentified European diplomat, according to Foreign Policy. “They’re having to go to the front line to make things happen, which is putting them at much greater risk than you would normally see.”
“It’s all about a lack of preparedness among the military,” the diplomat said. “They are asking for things to happen, and they are not happening.”
James Foggo, a retired four-star admiral who led the Navy’s 6th Fleet and who now leads the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States, said Moscow is also pushing hard.
“There’s direction coming from on high: You better get your a** out there and make progress or else,” he said.
He said Russia has an “undisciplined and unprofessional army that is poorly led and poorly trained, and to make up for it, [they] push the generals into the field.”
He said Russian troops are “out there, and they’re kind of winging it. This is breaking down into an undisciplined rabble.”
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