Russia Detained Several Senior Military Officers in Wake of Wagner Mutiny

Hours after Russian paramilitary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin began a short-lived march on Moscow, the country’s domestic security service detained several high-ranking military officers, including Gen. Sergei Surovikin, head of aerospace forces, people familiar with the situation said.

Surovikin, known as General Armageddon for bombing campaigns he waged in Syria, is being held and interrogated in Moscow, the people said. He hasn’t been charged with a crime. One said Surovikin knew about plans for the insurrection but that the general wasn’t involved in the June 24 mutiny.

The Kremlin’s effort to weed out officers suspected of disloyalty is broader than publicly known, according to the people, who said at least 13 senior officers were detained for questioning, with some later released, and around 15 suspended from duty or fired.

“The detentions are about cleaning the ranks of those who it is believed can’t be trusted anymore,” one said.

Neither the Kremlin nor Russia’s Defense Ministry responded to requests for comment. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said in a video circulating on Russian social media this week that Surovikin was resting and “not available right now.”

In another sign of fractures within Russia’s security establishment, a senior Russian commander in southern Ukraine accused the country’s military leaders of behaving “in a treasonous and vile way.”

The officer, Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, leveled his accusations after being fired for previous critical comments about the way the war was being fought.

Popov sent an audio message to troops saying he was removed from command for telling the truth to his superiors. Popov said military leaders were “decapitating the army in its hardest and most difficult moment.”

The harsh words are a sign of the depth of the disaffection with Russia’s armed forces after more than a year of tough fighting and heavy losses in Ukraine, and signaled that the Wagner mutiny is emboldening other critics of Russia’s leadership.

Surovikin’s deputy, Col. Gen. Andrey Yudin, and the deputy head of military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alexeyev, also were detained but later released. They have been suspended from duty, their movements have been restricted and they are under observation, one of the people said.

Among other figures detained is former Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, who previously served as deputy defense minister and joined Prigozhin’s Wagner Group private military company in late April.

Surovikin was last seen in a video released June 23, looking distressed and clutching a weapon with his right hand as he pleaded with Prigozhin and his fighters to call off the proposed revolt.

Surovikin’s detention was earlier reported by the Financial Times.

Since the late June rebellion, the Kremlin has set about dismantling Wagner, an important fighting force for the Russians in Ukraine, responsible for the recent capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and an instrument of Russian power projection in the Middle East and Africa.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that it had taken possession of hundreds of tanks, rocket launchers and artillery pieces from Wagner, as well as 20,000 assault rifles and other small arms and 2,500 tons of ammunition.

If true, that would likely leave any remaining Wagner units in Russia or Ukraine largely without weaponry.

Prigozhin’s mutiny, although called off before he and an armed column reached Moscow, represented the biggest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 23 years in power and has unsettled Russia’s elite as well as the ranks of the armed forces.

The paramilitary leader’s demands included the removal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces. Both men have appeared, still in post, in videos published by the Defense Ministry since the aborted mutiny. Some Russian military analysts have suggested that retaining Shoigu and Gerasimov enables the Kremlin to project cohesion among the armed forces.

“Exactly because of the events of June 24th, it’s impossible for Putin to get rid of Shoigu and Gerasimov in the near future,” said Mikhail Barabanov, a senior research fellow at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defense think tank.

While Wagner soldiers were fighting on the front line in Bakhmut, Prigozhin repeatedly accused Moscow’s military leaders of denying them the ammunition they needed. But he consistently championed Surovikin, who was named commander of Russian forces in Ukraine in October.

In that role, Surovikin introduced a new tactic aimed at degrading Ukraine’s power grid and other critical infrastructure with missile strikes. In January, he was replaced by Gerasimov, one of Prigozhin’s main rivals.

Surovikin wasn’t being held in a detention center, but was undergoing repeated interrogations as investigators probed what role, if any, he played in the uprising, the people familiar with the situation said.

They said Surovikin could be released once Putin decides how to handle the fallout from the mutiny.

The Kremlin’s position has been increasingly complicated by indications that Prigozhin has remained inside Russia despite public assurances that he would leave for Belarus along with his fighters, according to an agreement reached between Putin and Prigozhin.

The Kremlin last week said Putin met with Prigozhin and Wagner commanders for about three hours in late June in what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called a show of loyalty to Putin.

Late last month, when asked whether Putin still trusted Surovikin, Peskov said only that the supreme commander was working with the minister of defense and the chief of the general staff.

At that time, Surovikin’s daughter told local media that her father hadn’t been arrested and was working as usual. His wife, however, said Wednesday night that he hadn’t returned from work, according to a person who is in touch with her.

Surovikin was just one of a number of officers detained who had ties with Wagner.

Alexeyev had longtime links with Wagner but had posted a video in the early stages of its insurrection calling on them to turn back.

Mizintsev gained the moniker the Butcher of Mariupol as he oversaw Russia’s assault on the Ukrainian city with heavy bombing raids on civilian quarters to force the city to surrender.

Mizintsev had been removed from his position of deputy minister in charge of logistics, Russian military correspondents reported earlier this year, and had joined Wagner months before the mutiny, appearing on Russian social media in a Wagner uniform.

—Yaroslav Trofimov contributed to this article.

Write to Thomas Grove at [email protected]