(Kyiv) Kyiv claimed Friday to have killed a new Russian general during fighting in southern Ukraine, according to an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Oleksiï Arestovych.
Posted at 11:08 a.m.
“Our troops […] killed the commander of the 49and army of the southern district of Russia, General Yakov Rezantsev, in a bombardment of the airfield of Chornobaivka ”, located in the Kherson region (south), Mr. Arestovych said in a video message.
This is the sixth Russian general killed in Ukraine since the start of the war on February 24, according to Kyiv, which claimed responsibility for the deaths of generals Andrei Sukhovetsky, Andrei Kolesnikov, Vitali Guerassimov, Oleg Mitiayev and Andrei Mordvichev.
Russia has so far only confirmed the death in Ukraine of General Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41and army after serving in Syria in 2018-19, as well as the number 2 of the Black Sea Fleet, Captain Andrei Paliï.
“Another two-star general was killed today on the Russian side, the second in twelve days,” retired American general Mark Hertling said on March 8 on CNN, noting that the Russian army was committing “ repeated errors” and “communicated by non-encrypted means”.
Rumors were of other Russian officers killed, while the Russian offensive is, in the opinion of observers, much less effective than initially expected by Moscow.
All the analysts consulted by AFP converged on the astonishing unpreparedness of the Russian army before the offensive.
Alexander Grinberg, an analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy (JISS), notes that while the conditions of Guerassimov’s death remain unknown, Sukhovetsky was apparently killed by a sniper.
“He was killed two days after (the start of) the operation because no one had really ever considered war” in Russia, he explained to AFP.
“They thought it would be a police-like operation to put a government loyal to Moscow in place of Zelensky,” he added. “It is impossible for an officer of this rank to be so close to the fighting”.
Elie Tenenbaum, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), believes that the presence on the ground of officers of this level bears witness to the fact that Moscow “asks generals to be at the head of their troops and to take risks” to compensate for a difficult moral situation of the troops.
Russia acknowledged on Friday the death of 1,351 of its soldiers since the start of its military offensive in Ukraine.