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Part 7: The complex history of Islamic extremism and Russia’s contribution to the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS

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This is part seven of a ten-part series that explains the rise of modern Islamic extremism. From 1951 to 2021, a series of key geopolitical events, many independent of each other, caused the Islamic Revolution, the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS, the creation and collapse of the caliphate, and the reconstitution of ISIS as ISKP. While Western influence and diplomatic blunders are well documented through this period, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are equally culpable. The editors would like to note that a vast majority of the 1.8 billion people who are adherents to some form of Islam are peaceful and reject all forms of religious violence.

Read Part Six: The complex history of Islamic extremism and Russia’s contribution to the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS

Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush become partners in the ‘War Against Terror’

The Rise of Al Qaeda

The first al Qaeda plot to attack the United States was uncovered in November 1990 when the FBI arrested operatives who were planning to blow up skyscrapers and government buildings. It would be an aspiration that Osama bin Laden would maintain for 11 more years.

In 1992, two bombs tore through Aden, Yemen, intending to target United States troops staying at the Gold Mohur and Aden Movenpick Hotels. In the first bombing, the small group of troops had already left for Somalia, and in the second, the bomb went off prematurely.

Then, on February 26, 1993, a truck bomb exploded in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in an attempt to topple the towers. The blast caused extensive damage, killing six and wounding over 1,000. Officially, Al Qaeda didn’t order the attack, but the chief architect, Ramzi Yousef, was trained by the terrorist organization.

Heavy equipment excavating the site of the World Trade Center parking garage bombing – February 1993
Credit – Photographer unknown – public domain

The group involved in the planning and execution was exposed when Mohammad Salameh, who rented the truck used to deliver the bomb, returned to the rental agency in New Jersey trying to get his $400 cash security deposit back.

The Saudi government accused bin Laden of being behind a November 1995 bombing in Riyadh that killed five American and two Indian soldiers and wounded 60. Three years later, two bombings targeting the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 and wounded more than 5,000 people.

The Millennium Plots and 9/11

Each successful attack drew more money and members to Al Qaeda’s ranks. A wave of terror that was planned for the year 2000 New Year celebrations, dubbed the Millennium Attack Plots, was mostly thwarted, partially by luck.

Jordanian officials uncovered a plot to attack four locations during New Year, including the Radisson Hotel in Amman, the Christian church on Mount Nebo, the border crossing between Israel and Jordan, and a holy site on the Jordan River where it is believed profit John the Baptist baptized Jesus of Nazareth. One of the plotters was Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who would go on to be the founder of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

On December 12, 1999, Jordanian security forces arrested 16 people involved with the plot, eventually putting 28 people on trial. However, Al Zarqawi fled to Pakistan before he could be arrested. Twenty-two defendants were found guilty of the plot, including six with Al Qaeda, who were all sentenced to death. Another architect of the plot, Saudi national Abu Zubaydah, was the mastermind behind attacks planned in the United States.

Algerian national Ahmed Ressam traveled from Montreal, Canada, and attempted to enter the United States on a ferry through Port Angeles, Washington. Ressam raised suspicion among customs officials who searched his car and found enough explosives to produce four small bombs, timers, and detonators. He was arrested on December 14, 1999, and told investigators that Zubaydah was orchestrating the bombing of LAX Airport in Los Angeles under the order of bin Laden. Further investigation found that the Space Needle in Seattle, the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, and Ontario Airport in the Los Angeles area were also planned targets.

On the other side of the world, Al Qaeda operatives hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 on December 24, 1999, and crisscrossed the Greater Middle East for a week, stabbing one passenger to death, a German, and wounding 17 others. The Indian government gave in to their demands, releasing convicted Al Qaeda-aligned terrorists Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Sheikh would go on to be one of the chief planners of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Over the next 20 years, Azhar would lead three terror attacks in India, killing hundreds.

On New Year’s Eve in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, 300 members of the terror group Takfir wal-Hijra secured dozens of villages in northern Lebanon, attempting to establish the first Sharia law-based caliphate in the mountainous region. Over 13,000 troops were deployed to quell the uprising with fighting continuing until January 6, 2000. Twenty-five terrorists were killed, and another 55 were captured. Bin Laden was credited with financing Takfir wal-Hijra through shell companies and a bank in Beirut. The surviving fighters who escaped disappeared into the Palestinian refugee camp in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon. The 55 who were captured were sentenced to ten years to life in prison, with all receiving pardons in 2005.

The rift between al Qaeda and those who sought an even stricter interpretation of Shari law may go back as far as the mid-1990s. It is alleged that an offshoot of Takfir wal-Hijra in Sudan plotted to assassinate bin Laden in 1995 due to his liberal views on Sharia law and the formation of a caliphate. Despite the rift, the group led over a dozen terror attacks in Africa in coordination with Al Qaeda, mostly in Sudan.

The last part of the plot was an attack on the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000, while it was refueling at the Yemeni port of Aden. The attack failed because the small boat, loaded with over 400 kilograms of plastic explosives, sank due to the amount of weight in the bow.

Damage to the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole after the October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Aden, Yemen
Credit – Photographer unknown – public domain

Al Qaeda learned from its mistake and, on October 12, attacked the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole while it refueled at Aden. Two small fiberglass boats were used, distributing more than 450 kilograms of C4 plastic explosives, and each only had a single suicide bomber onboard. Both boats struck the Cole, tearing a 40-foot-long gash into the port side and sparking a large fire. Seventeen crew members were killed and 39 wounded, and it took three days for damage control to stabilize the ship. U.S. officials would later find the Sudanese government to be complicit in working with Al Qaeda and seized over $13 billion in assets.

Eleven years after the first al Qaeda plot to destroy American skyscrapers was uncovered, bin Laden would achieve his goal. On September 11, 2001, two hijacked commercial airliners struck both towers of the World Trade Center in New York, collapsing the buildings. A third hijacked aircraft struck the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers tried to regain control. The attacks killed 2,996 and wounded over 6,000. Two decades later, hundreds more would die from illnesses attributed to the 9/11 attacks.

Initially, bin Laden denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but in 2004, as part of a brief manifesto, he wrote, “God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.”

A thirst for revenge fuels Vladimir Putin’s ascendency

When the Red Terror and Soviet Famine ended in 1922, the Soviet Union entered a brief period of reform which ended some of the oppressive Tzarist policies. Vladimir Lenin, who was already in declining health, eased restrictions on the Soviet republics, allowing them to reembrace their original culture, including language, religion, and art. Individuals were permitted to have small businesses within the guidelines of the Soviet government, blending Communism and Socialism.

The economy started to improve, and after decades of repression, deportations, war, famine, revolution, and civil war, the new Soviet society appeared to be finding its feet. All of this came to an end in late 1924 when Joseph Stalin became the Secretary-General, despite Lenin’s warnings. Seventy-five years later, history wouldn’t repeat, but it would rhyme.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly created Russian Federation entered a tumultuous period. Moscow struggled to contain inflation and wild swings of the rouble. The new country would face the 1993 Constitutional Crisis, and the economy would collapse in 1994 and 1998. For the connected and the bold, the underlying chaos was an opportunity for those seeking wealth and the growth of organized crime. However, unlike the turmoil of the Depression and Prohibition Era in the United States, where organized crime bosses fought over the control of bootleg alcohol, gambling, and illegal weapons, the new oligarch class fought for control of the now privatized industrial sectors of Russia—coal, steel, oil and gas, grain, construction, heavy equipment, and technology. Fueled by endemic government corruption, the Yeltsin administration and the now weakened state security services not only ignored the Game of Thrones happening in open view but, for the right price, participated in it. One of the men who grew allies during this period was the now-former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

In 1991, an embittered Putin resigned from the KGB, refusing to work for the newly created Federal Security Agency (AFB). President Yeltsin dissolved the KGB in November 1991 in response to a failed coup d’etat that was led by Soviet hardliners earlier in the year, including the head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov. Yeltsin would go on to sign two more decrees, one creating the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation in January 1992 and the second in December 1993, forming the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation (FSK). Each decree further eroded the legacy power structure created by the KGB.

Putin returned to his native home of St. Petersburg and, using information the KGB had gathered during the Soviet era, blackmailed Mayor Anatoly Sobchak to gain a job in the city government. He started as a reformer in name only, investigating corruption, but in reality, he was Sobchak’s political strongman.

Putin’s career was unremarkable until 1994 when he was named deputy mayor. He and Deputy Vladimir Yakovlev went on to run the city, with Putin building a circle of influence and earning future favors among the influential, wealthy, and the criminal underground. Sobchak’s initial popularity faded from 1995 to 1996 as public services deteriorated, crime increased, and allegations of corruption within the city government grew.

Putin became the local leader of the politically liberal and fiscally conservative Our Home–Russia Political Party in 1995 and ran the reelection campaign for Sobchak. Sobchak lost to his deputy Yakovlev in a close election, putting Putin out of a job. Sobchak would become the focus of a corruption investigation in 1997 and would flee to France.

Using his contacts and network, Putin moved to Moscow in early 1997 and was named the deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department. Less than a year later, he joined President Yeltsin’s staff and quickly maneuvered himself through a number of roles before becoming the leader of the FSK replacement, the 1995 Yeltsin-created Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), on July 25, 1998.

Putin only led the FSB for 13 months, but he implemented a complete restructuring and dismissed almost all of the leadership, installing former Soviet-era KGB agents loyal to the ideals of Kryuchkov and his vision of restoring Russia to its former glory.

Like Lenin in 1922, Yeltsin was in declining health in 1998. Presidential elections were coming in less than two years, and potential candidates were starting to position themselves and build alliances. Within the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s inner circle started to warn him about Putin’s restructuring of the FSB, his growing influence and connections, and his desire to return to restore Soviet-style state controls. His aspirations were supported by a growing list of oligarchs, who viewed Putin as someone they could control while leveraging his vision of state security to grow and protect their wealth.

On August 9, 1999, Putin was appointed as one of three deputy prime ministers of the Russian Federation and endorsed by Yeltsin as his future successor in the upcoming 2000 elections. Eight days later, the State Duma confirmed Putin as the acting Prime Minister.

In the span of 2 1/2 years, Putin had gone from a failed St. Petersburg deputy mayor to the unelected prime minister of the second most powerful country on the planet. Even before Yeltsin’s endorsement, alarm bells were going off within the corners of the FSB and in the pages of the newly created free press about Putin and his plans.

To help his rise to power, Putin makes a series of deals with Islamic terrorist leaders

In the Sixth Part of this series, Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev and his connections to Pakistan and Afghanistan and his encounters with organizations adjacent to Al Qaeda were lightly touched.

A young Basayev arrived in Azerbaijan in 1992 with an estimated 1,000 Chechen militants to fight in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, leading a call for jihad with Chechen leader Salman Raduyev. Basayev left for the Abkhazia region of Georgia in late 1992, while Raduyev continued to command the Chechen contingent. Reportedly, Basayev ordered the withdrawal from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in 1993 due to a series of military defeats and a lack of support for the call to jihad.

Chechen leader and terrorist Shamil Basayev – 1995
Credit – Photographer Natalia Medvedeva – public domain

Basayev would fight on the side of the Moscow-backed Abkhazia separatists, and he would go on to lead up to 1,500 volunteer fighters of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (CMPC). Basayev is accused of overseeing the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in the breakaway Abkhazia Republic, the September 27 to October 11, 1993, Sukhumi Massacre, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for the mass executions of captured Georgian soldiers.

This is where Basayev’s history becomes murky. He is believed to have defended Russian President Yeltsin during the failed August 1991 coup d’etat, occupying the barricades of the Russian White House with other Yeltsin supporters. There are many allegations that during the War in Abkhazia, Basayev and up to 200 Chechens within the CMPC received training and arms from the Main Defense Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (GRU). The CMPC would fall apart at the end of the War in Abkhazia, with different factions supporting the Moscow-backed breakaway republic and others aligning with Chechnya and other radical Islamic factions. And despite having a death warrant on his head, Basayev was able to freely travel between Chechnya, Georgia, and the Russian Federation.

Basayev would go on to run for president of Chechnya, coming in second place. He was then appointed deputy prime minister by newly elected president Aslam Maskhadov and actively worked to undermine his government. During a six-month period in which he was symbolically named the acting president of Chechnya, he gutted government oversight, shut down numerous ministries, and turned a blind eye to the theft of natural resources. By the end of 1998, Basayev was a warlord leading a rival faction against Maskhadov and had aligned himself with Afghanistan mujahideen veteran and Al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi national. Al-Khattab had also broken away from President Maskhadov despite being named the Chief of Military Training for the Chechen Armed Forces in 1996.

Basayev met with Putin in March 1999 and agreed to help the Kremlin topple Maskhadov’s Chechen government and support a Russian invasion. Putin would reverse the failure of the First Chechen War with a quick success by taking just the northern third of the republic to the Terek River. Transcripts of phone records would show that Putin and his associates had numerous phone calls with almost a dozen radical Muslims and were using the FSB to orchestrate both kinetic and information warfare plans.

Al-Khattab and Basayev, along with Raduyev, openly called for the occupation of the Russian Federation Republic of Dagestan and the formation of a single state under Islamic Sharia law, declaring the final goal of expelling all Russians from the Caucasus. Putin had reached 20 years into the KGB past to tap the fears of long-dead Soviet leaders that Iranian-style radical Islam would spread to the Caucasus.

Independent of Putin’s plan, in April 1999, the Emir of the Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan (IDD), Bagauddin Magomedov, called for jihad to liberate “Dagestan and the Caucasus from the Russian colonial yoke” and created an unusual and doomed alliance. Magomedov and the IDD were aligned with Wahhabism, while Al-Khattab formed the Islamic Legion, comprised of foreign fighters, with a significant number aligned with the doctrine of Al Qaeda.

In July, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, the Deputy Prime Minister of National Security for Chechnya, and Deputy Prosecutor-General Adam Torkhashev traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin and warn him of the imminent invasion of Dagestan, which Putin was well aware of and counting on. Shortly after the Moscow meeting, an article in the Russian newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda warned that the Kremlin was preparing a series of false flag attacks in Moscow to undermine President Yeltsin and cited leaked documents.

The War in Dagestan and false flag attacks in Russia bring Putin to power

On August 4, the IDD launched its first attacks, and three days later, the Muslim Legion invaded the Republic of Dagestan. In an ironic twist, Basayev and al-Khattab were not greeted as liberators and instead were met with fierce resistance. Shortly after, President Yeltsin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. On August 19, newly minted acting prime minister Putin set a deadline for Russian forces to crush the rebellion by the end of the month. In the same speech, Putin threatened to start bombing Dagestani rebels “hiding in Chechnya.” In reality, airstrikes on Chechnya started on August 8, but the Kremlin didn’t acknowledge the bombings until August 26. By September 11, major fighting in Dagestan was over, and the Second Chechen War had started. What Basayev didn’t know is he had been double-crossed by Putin, who had cut another deal. He didn’t want a third of Chechnya; he was going to take it all.

Yeltsin and Putin intentionally delayed the response of Russian ground troops, preferring to let Dagestani forces exhaust themselves while prolonging the raids coming from Chechnya. By the end of August, a wave of terror attacks would spread across Russia, with history revealing the FSB executed most of them under the order of Putin.

The first attack was on August 31 at an arcade in the Manezh Square Shopping Mall in Moscow, adjacent to the Kremlin. Three phone calls allegedly from the Liberation Army of Dagestan took credit for the attack. Future investigations would blame the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, an Islamist mujahideen organization co-created by al-Khattab and Basayev.

The next bombing was on September 4 in Buynaksk in Dagestan. The apartment building served as housing for Russian border guards and their families and was destroyed by a car bomb. Sixty-four people were killed, and another 133 were wounded. A second car bomb containing 2,700 kilograms of explosives was found by the Russian Army Hospital and defused.

On September 9, a bomb estimated to weigh 400 kilograms exploded in a Moscow apartment building. The nine-story brezhnevka was destroyed, killing 106 and wounding 249. The next day, Putin called United States President Bill Clinton and told him he was confident the bombing was executed by Chechen terrorists, adding that he believed the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa were not executed by Al Qaeda but by Chechnya.

At 5 a.m. on September 13, the next bomb exploded, destroying an eight-story apartment building, killing 119 and wounding 200. Due to poor planning, the false flag plot started to fall apart.

After the second bombing, Moscow businessman and landlord Achemez Gochiyaev had a horrifying realization. An acquaintance of his who was a former FSB agent had requested to rent the basement areas of four apartment buildings. The two blasts were in his buildings. Believing he was being set up, he contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs, explaining what had happened and warning that bombs were likely in two more buildings. Moscow police searched the basements, finding massive bombs made of RDX.

As the smoke was still rising over the apartment block on Kashira Road, State Duma Deputy Gennadiy Seleznyov announced that there had been a third bombing in Volgodonsk in the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia. There had been no such explosion, but on September 16, a third bomb destroyed a nine-story brezhnevka in Volgodonsk, killing 17 and wounding 69.

On September 22, a man in the Russian city of Ryazan reported seeing two suspicious men carrying sacks into the basement of an apartment building from a car with partially obscured Moscow license plates. Police found 150 kilograms of white powder in three sacks with detonators and timers. Onsite testing identified the contents of the bags as the explosive RDX. The next day, Putin ordered the bombing of the Chechen capital of Grozny in response to the allegedly most recent attempted terrorist attack, declaring “no sympathy for the bandits.”

A quick investigation and telephone records traced the car and two men to a telephone number linked to the FSB office in Ryazan. The Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested three people who identified themselves as FSB agents from Moscow. Putin’s operation was in crisis, as Moscow had declared that the explosives were real to justify the bombing of Grozny. On September 24, the Kremlin declared the bags were filled with sugar, and the entire event was an FSB training exercise that ended in success due to the quick reaction of local authorities.

President Boris Yeltsin naming Vladimir Putin acting President of the Russian Federation – December 31, 1999
Credit – Press office of the Russian Federation – photographer unknown

Despite the obvious mistakes pointing to a government plot, Putin’s popularity soared. On December 31, Yeltsin resigned and named Putin acting President. Riding a wave of popularity due to the response to the so-called terror attacks and the initial success in Dagestan, Putin cruised to victory when Russians went to the polls on March 26, 2000.

Looking into Putin’s soul

The United States held elections in November 2000, and George W. Bush was elected the 43rd President in a contested election. On June 16, 2001, President Bush and President Putin met for the first time in Brdo Pri Kranju, Slovenia. Almost the entire world believed the Cold War was over, and despite the U.S. intelligence reports about Moscow’s ties to Islamic terror and the false flag attacks on Moscow, President Bush took his own path.

“This was a very good meeting. And I look forward to my next meeting with President Putin in July. I very much enjoyed our time together. He’s an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well. Russia and America have the opportunity to accomplish much together; we should seize it. And today, we have begun.”

The Western press asked hard questions after Bush and Putin made their separate remarks. It was a question directed at Putin, which led to a pivotal moment in U.S.-Russian relations.

“A question to both of you, if I may. President Putin, President Bush has said that he’s going to go forward with his missile defense plans basically with or without your blessing. Are you unyielding in your opposition to his missile defense plan? Is there anything you can do to stop it? And to President Bush. Did President Putin ease your concern at all about the spread of nuclear technologies by Russia, and is this a man that Americans can trust?”

Bush directed the question to Putin first, and when the question of trust was addressed, the Russian President said, “Can we trust Russia? I’m not going to answer that. I could ask the very same question.”

There was a brief but awkward pause caused by Putin’s response, with Bush breaking the sudden tension.“I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue. There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.”

Russian troops stand over a mass grave in Chechnya – February 2000
Credit – Natalia Medvedeva – Creative Commons 3.0

During their private meeting, Bush and Putin discussed Chechnya, Dagestan, and Russia’s response to Islamic terrorism, among many other topics. Putin was right to refuse to answer the trust question because he wasn’t negotiating honestly. Over a year ago, Putin cut another deal with the Chief Mufti of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation had completed the first phase of its occupation of Chechnya in June 2000, and Putin named Kadyrov the head of the administration of the Chechen Republic.

For Al Qaeda, which was at its apex of power, this was the ultimate betrayal.

Next installment: A second wave of Islamic terror spreads across Russia, and this time, the attacks are real. The Second Chechen War continues for another eight years. Osama bin Laden’s influence fades, and Al Qaeda fractures. The ISIS caliphate rises and falls as Syria becomes the next Russian battleground.

International News, Russia-Ukraine War

Russian President Igor Strelkov Girkin?

Hours after appearing in a Moscow courtroom, former FSB Colonel and convicted war criminal Igor Strelkov Girkin announced his support of an effort to nominate him as a candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections in Russia. Girkin, also known by his alias of Strelkov, given to him by his former employer, the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), was arrested on June 21 and charged with extremism for a post he made on Telegram in May 2022.

If convicted of his current charges, he faces up to eight years in a penal colony in a justice system with a 99% conviction rate. On August 3, Girkin’s case was declared a “state secret,” enabling Moscow to hold his trial in secret.

A brutal critic of how the Kremlin has been running its so-called “special military operation” after Russia’s 2023 winter offensive failed, Girkin formed the Angry Patriots Club, comprised of extremists, even by Russian standards. The Angry Patriots want to declare martial law, fully mobilize the Russian population, and shift to a wartime economy to ensure the destruction of Ukraine and its people—some advocate using any means to destroy Ukraine, including nuclear weapons.

Apparently posting from his cell at the infamous Lefortovo Prison, Girkin released his reasons for accepting the nomination effort, attacking the policies of incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin using sarcasm to dance around Russia’s so-called “don’t say war” laws.

“The president refuses to lead military operations [and] considers himself incompetent in military affairs,” Girkini wrote, adding, “I consider myself more competent in military affairs than the incumbent president and definitely more than the incumbent defense minister, so I could fulfill the duty of the supreme commander-in-chief as required by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”

He went on to call Putin “extremely gullible” and “too kind,” using the Russian leader’s words against him, stating that Putin has been led by the nose by Western leaders for decades. While throwing barbs at his potential political opponent in the upcoming 2024 elections in Russia, Girkin also went after the Russian oligarch class, largely created during the criminal era in the post-Soviet 1990s.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich is a highly moral person, always true to his word and firmly fulfilling the promises given to those who brought him to power in the late nineties. I have promised nothing to anyone and can, therefore, ignore all the personal guarantees of all the presidents of the Russian Federation from 1991 to the present if I consider that this is useful for the people and the state.”

On August 29, a bearded and defiant-looking Girkin was brought to a Moscow court to determine if the charges against him were valid. It was determined there was enough probable cause to continue to hold him until the next hearing scheduled for September 18.

Although he is being kept at FSB-run Lefortovo, Girkin is getting preferential treatment. He is held in a cell designed for two people with a partial kitchenette and a television. Earlier in August, his wife, Miroslava Reginskaya, claimed that his health was declining and that her husband was being denied medication for his heart condition and had not been seen by a doctor. Just before his August 29 hearing, she provided an update stating that he was given a physical, his health had improved, and some of his personal effects were returned to him.

One of Russia’s original “little green men” in Ukraine, Girkin was the first Minister of Defense for the illegitimate so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and has bragged about committing and ordering war crimes. He was convicted by a Dutch court on November 17, 2022, as one of three men responsible for the July 17, 2014, downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people.

For some Russians, he is a hero, while others consider him incompetent after he led a disastrous Kremlin-backed advance on Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the summer of 2014. After the 1st Army Corps of the DNR collapsed in August 2014, Moscow decided to remove Girkin, who was using his assumed name of Strelkov then. Another one of Russia’s little green Seymon Pegov, who now leads the Russian military blog WarGonzo, has criticized Girkin for years, claiming that he and his unit were abandoned in Slovyansk when Girkin fled hiding in the trunk of a car.

After returning to Russia, Girkin became a prolific blogger and a vocal critic of Russian policies while espousing nationalist and antisemitic talking points. He tried to slip into occupied Crimea in August 2022 but was detained by border guards and refused entry. In October, he became a volunteer mobik for a unit in the DNR but left a month later. He claimed he had been deceived and that his contract was only for one day, leaving him exposed legally as an unlawful combatant. When Girkin left Ukraine for the second time, there was a $100,000 bounty for his capture.

Over the winter, he got into a public spat with the now-deceased Private Military Company Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, criticizing his “attention-seeking,” using dead Russian soldiers as “props,” and publicly complaining about ammunition shortages. Prigozhin offered Girkin the opportunity to sign a contract with PMC Wagner, first as an entry-level mercenary and later as the equivalent of a field officer. Ultimately, he refused, claiming that Prigozhin and the Wagner Group had insulted him and questioned his loyalty to Russia.

Girkin isn’t the first high-profile prisoner in the Russian penal system to have apparent ready access to the Internet. Anti-corruption activist and lawyer Alexei Navalny has also been able to post criticism of Putin despite being incarcerated.

The Kremlin has not released a statement about the potential candidacy of Girkin or the legalities of his potential run for president.

International News, Russia-Ukraine War

The Most Successful Russian Military Leaders are Demoted, Detained, Dismissed, or Deceased

Since Russia expanded its war of aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, The Russian Federation Armed Forces have only had a handful of operational successes turn into strategic victories. While Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief-of-Staff Valery Gerasimov have maintained their stature in the Kremlin despite repeated failures, there is a common thread among the men who have been able to achieve victories. Without exception, they are either demoted, detained, dismissed, or deceased.

Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev

Accomplishment: The Capture of Mariupol

General Mizintsev is known as the Butcher of Mariupol and is responsible for 25,000 to 100,000 civilian deaths caused during the 86-day siege of the city. He is accused of setting up the filtration camp structure and ordering attacks on mutually agreed green corridors. On September 24, 2022, the future looked bright for Mizintsev when he was reassigned to Deputy Minister of Defense and charged with overseeing logistics.

Within the Kremlin, Mizintsev was already known to be an ally of Private Military Company Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. In September, this wasn’t viewed as a liability, but as tension between the Kremlin and Prigozhin reached a boiling point, there were signs that Shoigu was leading a quiet purge of Wagner allies. Mizintsev was dismissed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 27, 2023, with no official reason given. There was immediate speculation that Mizintsev had been leaking information to Prigozhin for months about how the Minister of Defense was actively interfering with ammunition and weapons shipment to PMC Wagner. Additionally, there were unsubstantiated claims that Mizintsev had used his position to increase the Shoigu-restricted allocation of munitions to Wagner mercenaries in Bakhmut.

A week after being dismissed, Mitzintsev joined Wagner Group’s Council of Commanders and, on May 3, did a frontline inspection of supply, logistics, and Wagner mercenaries in Bakhmut. A day after his inspection, Mitzintsev reportedly briefed the Council of Commanders as the siege of Bakhmut entered its ninth month. Hours later, Prigozhin announced he was withdrawing from Bakhmut by May 10 due to a lack of ammunition and the failure of Russian military units to protect his flanks.

The status of Mizintsev is unclear. There were unsubstantiated claims that he was detained after the Prigozhin Insurrection of June 23 and has not been seen publicly since the failed revolt.

Lieutenant General Mikhal Zusko

Accomplishment: The capture of Kherson, the only large Ukrainian city captured intact

General Zusko led the 58th Combined Arms Army, which advanced from Crimea on February 24, 2022, and captured the city of Kherson on March 2 with the loss of less than 300 soldiers. The 58th CAA had assistance from Russian-aligned collaborators in Crimea and Kherson, who helped set conditions for the lightly contested advance. Shortly after capturing the critical Antonovskyy Bridge and occupying the city of Kherson, Zusko’s forces continued to advance, reaching the outskirts of the city of Mykolaiv and passing the administrative border of Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk, where Ukrainian forces established an effective defense. Zusko was rumored to have been arrested on March 31, 2022, accused of dereliction of duty due to mounting losses. It wasn’t verified until June 2022 that Zusko had been arrested for failing to capture Mykolaiv and was accused of providing Ukrainian military leaders with information on Russian positions due to his alleged use of unsecured communication channels.

General of the Army Alexander Dvornikov, Colonel General Gennady Zhidko, and Colonel General Alexander Lapin

Accomplishments: The capture of the Luhansk Oblast, including Severodonetsk and Lysychansk

The story of the three generals is intertwined due to their overlapping commands from April to October 2022.

The Kremlin ended its group command structure after Russia suffered strategic defeats at Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv in late March 2022. On April 8, it named General Dvornikov the first theaterwide commander of Russian forces in Ukraine.

Reportedly, Dvornikov was ordered to capture the remainder of the Donbas – Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts – by May 9. What the Kremlin got on May 8 was news of a disastrous wet crossing attempt at the Siverskyi Donets River near Bilohorivka. At least 500 Russian troops were killed, and over 80 military vehicles were lost, mostly due to artillery. On the same day, Russian troops supported by the Private Military Company Wagner Group captured Popasna. The crossing at Bilohorivka was supposed to create the second part of a pincer surrounding Ukrainian forces defending Severodonetsk.

With the pincers broken, Dvornikov started a brutal war of attrition on May 10, which led to the capture of the Luhansk Oblast at the expense of the 1st and 2nd Army Corps of Russia, Syrian volunteer groups and Chechen Akhmat forces, which were all combat destroyed by the beginning of July. Chechen Akhmat and the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, now officially part of the Russian Ministry of Defense, never recovered.

Dvornikov fell out of public view in the third week of May, and between May 26 and June 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed him as theaterwide commander, ending his 44-year military career. Although the capture of the Luhansk Oblast didn’t happen while he was the theaterwide commander, his tactics, which closely resembled World War II Russian Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s, did.

General Zhidko was named the new theaterwide commander of Russian troops, but it is unclear when his command officially started and ended. The first proof that Zhidko was the new theaterwide commander was on June 22, when he appeared with Shoigu. Zhidko was reportedly dismissed on July 12, but the Kremlin didn’t publicly name a new theaterwide commander until October 8. While he likely started theaterwide command around June 1, based on the official Kremlin announcements, Zhidko’s tenure as commander of all Russian troops may have been as short as 17 days. There were reports that he was dismissed from command due to a sharp increase in health issues related to chronic alcoholism. Zhidko, age 57, died on August 16, 2023, after a “long illness.”

Intertwined with Dvornikov and Zhidko was General Lapin. Lapin was the commander of the Central Military District of Russian Forces, serving as an area commander through April 8, 2022, before becoming a subordinate of Dvornikov, followed by Zhidko. On July 4, one day after Russia announced it had captured the Luhansk Oblast, Lapin was awarded the title of Hero of Russia by President Putin.

WBHG News analysts concluded in early June that Russia could capture the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the short term but lacked sufficient forces to hold territorial gains. As Russia’s combat potential decreased due to the nature of attritional warfare and the June arrival of NATO-provided guided multiple launch rocket systems (GMLRS), better known as HIMARS, Dvornikov or Zhidko pulled reserve forces of the Central Military District from Kharkiv and Donetsk into Luhansk. By early August of 2022, the units under Lapin’s command were exhausted, and near Izyum, equipment and ammunition shortages continued to worsen.

When Ukraine launched the Kharkiv Counteroffensive on September 5, Lapin was accused of abandoning his forces and incompetence by Chechen Colonel General Ramzan Kadyrov and PMC Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. On Telegram, Kadyrov wrote, “If I had my way, I would demote Lapin to a private, deprive him of his awards and, with a machine gun in his hands, send him to the front line to wash away his shame with blood.” The Chechen warlord, who has never stepped foot in Ukraine, also accused Lapin of cowardice for commanding from the rear.

A divide within the Kremlin spilled out into public view. Some military leaders and analysts accused Kadyrov and Prigozhin of playing politics and positioning themselves to gain deeper control of the Ministry of Defense. Kadyrov and Prigozin leveraged Wagner Group’s bot farms and faux news organizations, a network of Russian milbloggers, and their own social media channels to run an organized smear campaign against Lapin and to advocate for General of the Army Sergey Surovikin to be named the new theaterwide commander. Although Lapin was never the theaterwide commander, Zhidko’s unclear status created a vacuum, contributing to Lapin receiving an oversized portion of the blame for the failures in Kharkiv, at Izyum, and the Russian retreat from Lyman.

On October 8, 2022, Surovikin was named the theaterwide commander, and on October 29, Lapin was dismissed by President Putin. The only commander to still have a career after his fall, the Gerasimov-connected Lapin was named the chief of staff of the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation on January 10, 2023.

General of the Army Sergey Surovikin

Accomplishments: Successful retrograde operation from western Kherson, building the defensive structures in occupied Crimea, Kherson, Zaporzhzhia, and southern Donetsk, instilling basic discipline into Russian troops

On the same day General Surovikin was named the commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blew up the Kerch (also known as the Crimean) Bridge. Two days later, Ukraine requested a total communications blackout in Kherson, and the second phase of the Kherson Counteroffensive started 48 hours later.

During his ascent, Surovikin negotiated to execute three campaigns: first, the withdrawal of Russian forces west of the Dnipro River in Kherson; second, executing the same air campaign he ran in 2017 against Syrian civilians, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure; and third, taking the forces that withdraw from Kherson and achieving a strategic victory on another axis by December 31. In the public information space, state media started setting conditions with the Russian people to accept a withdrawal from Kherson as both a goodwill gesture and a move to more strategically advantageous positions.

On October 10, the first widescale Russian missile attack against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was launched. Between November 8 and 11, Surovikin executed a masterful retrograde operation from Kherson, preserving up to 25,000 Russian troops and their equipment, slipping across the Dnipro River and suffering less than 500 casualties.

The biggest legacy of Surovikin’s command was ending the Kremlin policy of sending mobiks with no training to the frontline and instilling military discipline among the Russian troops in Ukraine. This was accomplished by brutally enforcing existing military rules and protocols and creating busy work. Thousands of mobiks were involved in constructing the Surovikin Line, a network of defenses with up to three echelons 35 kilometers deep across occupied Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and southwestern Donetsk. The static defenses have stymied Ukraine’s summer offensive, forcing Kyiv to change tactics twice since June 4 to overcome the Russian network of minefields, antitank traps, trenches, tunnels, and bunkers.

Surovikin also tried to end sending untrained and ill-equipped Russian troops to the frontlines. The quality of Russian forces had improved significantly, as have their tactics, but since August, there appears to be a return of sending poorly trained, mobilized soldiers into battle.

During his tenure as commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine, Surovikin kept his “day job” as commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS), which included air defense. On December 5, 2022, the Engel-2 and Dyagilevo military airfields deep within Russia were attacked by Ukraine. Two Tu-95 strategic bombers and one Tu-22M3 bomber were damaged, and up to six Russian servicemembers were killed. On December 26, Engels-2 was attacked for a second time. During this period, the relationship between the Kremlin and Prigozhin had become toxic, and Russian troops had been in retreat for months except at Bakhmut, where daily advances were measured in the 10s of meters. It had become clear there would be no major victory for Russia for New Year’s celebrations.

On January 11, 2023, Surovikin was relieved of command and named a Deputy of Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov. The next day, PMC Wagner claimed they had captured Soledar, with the Russian Ministry of Defense not crediting the Wagnerites in their daily morning report.

Surovikin’s alignment with PMC Wagner was well known, and the relationship between the Kremlin and Prigozhin was already souring in October 2022. In May 2023, when Priogzhin threatened to leave Bakhmut by May 10, there were accusations that Surovikin was warning Wagner’s leader that the Kremlin was actively working to dismantle his company.

During the failed Prigozhin Insurrection on June 23, 2023, Surovikin made a video appeal to Prigozhin to stop his actions while holding a submachine gun on his knee. Shortly after, Surovikin was arrested, reportedly briefly held at Lefotovo Prison, before being transferred to an apartment where he remains under house arrest. On August 22, 2023, he was officially dismissed as the commander of the Russian VKS, and his future is unclear.

PMC Wagner Group Leaders Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmytry Utkin

Accomplishments: The capture of Popasna, Soledar, and Bakhmut and proved Russian penal units could be useful in battle

Private Military Company Wagner Group was asked to support the expansion of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in March 2022, and up to 1,000 mercenaries arrived on March 19. Wagner Group’s first action was in the Hirske-Zolote region and took a leading role in the capture of Popasna. That Russian advance ultimately severed the T-513 Highway between Lysychansk and Bakhmut in early June 2022, strangling Ukrainian logistics.

Also in May, Wagner’s mercenaries joined the Russian forces advancing in the direction of Bakhmut and Soledar from the Svitlodarsk Bulge. In early June, Prigozhin convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow him to create a battalion of penal soldiers assigned to PMC Wagner. One thousand convicts were recruited from Russian prisons and deployed east of Bakhmut in late June. The initial group suffered catastrophic losses of up to 90% killed and wounded, but the Kremlin believed the program was successful. Project K was born, and Prigozhin was given open access to Russia’s 335,000-plus prisoners. From July to December 2022, 49,000 criminals were recruited into the ranks of PMC Wagner. Recruiting of penal mercenaries peaked in October, but the numbers dropped sharply in November as word spread through the prison population of poor training, heavy losses, and penal units used for human wave attacks. In June 2023, the Council of Commanders reported that from March 2022 to May 2023, Wagner’s casualty rates were 82.5%.

While the September 2022 information war against General Lapin led by Prigozhin and Kadyrov was successful, politically, it was costly. The crumbs of goodwill between Prigozhin and Shoigu blew away like dust in the wind. Prigozhin was furious after the Russian Ministry of Defense snubbed Wagner Group in January 2023 and did not credit his mercenaries for the capture of Soledar. Hours later, the Kremlin released a clarifying statement, acknowledging that the ground fighting was accomplished by PMC Wagner and not just “volunteers.”

The political fallout was swift, and it became clear that President Putin was pulling away from his former caterer turned warlord. Shoigu effectively ended Project K, blocking PMC Wagner from further recruitment at Russian penal colonies. Wagner Group was already facing a recruiting crisis among its regular ranks because the pool they would normally recruit from – Russian soldiers – were dying at an alarming rate, didn’t want to return to Ukraine, and were facing stop-loss orders from the Kremlin, which was extending their service contracts. Days later, Shoigu created his own penal unit PMC called Storm-Z.

In February 2023, Prigozhin infamously threatened to leave Bakhmut, releasing a video with dozens of dead Wagnerites in the background, claiming their deaths were caused by the Russian Ministry of Defense withholding ammunition. Reactions in the Russian information space were mixed, with some Russian commanders claiming that Wagner was not being singled out for special treatment, stating that ammunition shortages were an issue theaterwide. Others criticized Prigozhin, asserting that PMC Wagner had been given preferential treatment at the expense of other axes and that the successes in Bakhmut were not due to superior training and tactics but an excess of ammunition that had been normalized. Others defended the mercenary leader, pointing out that the Wagnerites were the only force achieving operational success in Ukraine.

Prigozhin and Kadyrov hinted that the Chechen military leader provided some ammunition to Wagner Group in mid-February. In late February, the stalemate appeared to break when a lull in Russian artillery fire missions in the Bakhmut and Soledar areas of operation ended.

On May 5, Prigozhin made another video again standing in front of dozens of corpses, claiming they were Wagner mercenaries unnecessarily killed. He infamously growled, “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where’s the fucking ammo,” claiming the Kremlin had cut off his ammunition supplies and that elite Russian forces who were supposed to defend his flanks in Bakhmut were doing nothing. Prigozhin declared that if he didn’t get sufficient ammunition within 48 hours and Russian forces defending his flanks didn’t rejoin the battle, he would withdraw his forces.

WBHG News analysts noted that the April deal between the Russian Ministry of Defense and PMC Wagner, which transferred the defense of the flanks to Russian units while Wagnerites continued fighting within Bakhmut, was meant to destroy Wagner. The Kremlin only tasked Russian forces to hold the existing defense lines and focused on using artillery to protect themselves as Wagner mercenaries fought house-to-house in bloody attritional warfare. Moscow was repeating its policy of using indigenous and proxy forces to fight in the most difficult areas while preserving their own units, and Prigozhin could not or refused to see the true nature of the agreement.

It is also important to note that unlike in February 2023, when there was a noticeable decrease in Russian artillery fire, there was no such decrease in May. Prigozhin wasn’t facing an ammunition shortage. He was facing a staffing crisis caused by an appalling casualty rate and his inability to recruit new penal mercenaries.

The mercenaries that joined the ranks of Wagner Group in October and November who weren’t dead or badly wounded were reaching the end of their six-month contracts. While some analysts believed that Prigozhin would arbitrarily extend their contracts beyond six months, the team at WBHG News accurately predicted that would not happen. Prigozhin was a former convict who deeply believed convicted criminals could create a new life after prison. Prigozhin understood that if he didn’t honor his contracts with the penal mercenaries he always called “his boys,” he would break one of the foundations of the unwritten Russian convict code.

After Prigozhin’s May 5 video, General Kadyrov, who days earlier had called Prigozhin “his good friend” and said that the pair had planned surprises for Ukraine, lashed out at his former partner and questioned his loyalty to Russia. Two days later, while taking another swipe at Prigozhin and his “ego,” Kadyrov claimed that the pair had agreed for Chechen Akhmat to take over the offensive in Bakhmut. In a video posted on his Telegram channel, Kadyrov showed his letter to the Kremlin sent on May 7, which Moscow rejected.

On May 8, Prigozhin announced that the Russian Ministry of Defense told him that if his forces left on May 10, he and his mercenaries would be arrested for treason. Trapped militarily, legally, and politically, he announced the Wagnerites would stay until Bakhmut was captured. At the time of his capitulation, Wagner Group controlled 93% to 95% of the city. On May 20, Prigozhin announced the mission was accomplished, even if the victory claim was dubious. There has never been a picture of Russian troops in the Litak region of Bakhmut, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the southwest corner, and very few pictures and videos from Russian state media, troops, or Wagnerites west of the railroad tracks that split the city.

On June 1, Wagner started its withdrawal, and on June 10, the city was handed over to Russian forces. The Kremlin announced that all Private Military Companies would no longer be commanded independently and would have to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense by June 20, accepting to be under the command of the Russian Federation Armed Forces effective July 1. Up to two dozen PMCs fighting on behalf of Russia had been created since the start of 2023, and the mandate also impacted General Kadyrov. Kadyrov made a clean break from Prigozhin politically, throwing his loyalty back to Shoigu as he announced he was the first leader to sign a transfer of control with the Kremlin.

Prigozhin refused, and as the June 20 deadline passed, it was clear that a clash between PMC Wagner and the Kremlin was inevitable. Late on June 21, he released a rambling video accusing the Kremlin of lying about attacks on civilians in the Donbas, claiming the war against Ukraine was escalated so that oligarchs had more access to natural resources and that the entire invasion of Ukraine was based on a lie. If Prigozhin was the leader of a nation, his words were tantamount to the breaking of diplomatic relations and a prelude to a declaration of war.

On June 22, Prigozhin made a dubious claim that his camps in occupied Luhansk were attacked by Russian missiles, causing over a thousand casualties. A video released as proof across multiple Wagner Telegram channels did not support his claim. Twelve hours later, Prigozhin and Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin led an insurrection specifically targeting Shoigu and Gerasimov while pledging their loyalty to President Putin.

Wagner mercenaries took control of Rostov-on-Don and surrounded the Southern Military District headquarters, barely firing a shot. Utkin led a brigade of Wagnerites in a convoy that advanced 670 kilometers in 12 hours toward Moscow. The so-called “March for Freedom” ended as quickly as it started, with Prigozhin asking his followers to stand down on June 24.

In the end, 15 to 22 Russian soldiers died, and seven helicopters and an Il-22M command and control plane were shot down. Part of a refinery was in flames, one highway bridge was destroyed, and at least three civilians were killed on June 24 when the Russian VKS started to bomb highways indiscriminately.

President Putin was invisible through the insurrection, but after it ended, he called the attempted rebellion treason and promised swift justice. Just 48 hours later, it was announced that Prigozhin would not face criminal charges, and two days later, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko announced he had created a peace deal between himself, Prigozhin, and Putin. PMC Wagner would relocate to Belarus, where Prigozhin would live in exile. WBHG News analysts never believed this was a firm deal and warned that previous history shows that anyone disloyal to Putin had ended up imprisoned, dead, or hiding after surviving an assassination attempt. Even among Putin’s former closest allies, there had never been an exception to this, and in 2018, Putin told a reporter that “betrayal” was unforgivable.

In early July, a camp to accommodate up to 8,500 Wagner mercenaries was built in Tsel, Belarus, and on July 15, Prigozhin posted a selfie showing himself in his underwear at the Belarus encampment. On July 19, PMC Wagner released a video showing Prigozhin and Utkin addressing a group of Wagnerites about the organization’s future, with the media-shy Utkin declaring in English, “Welcome to Hell!”

But just under the surface, the claims that 25,000 Wagner mercenaries would occupy Belarus to supplement Lukashenko’s army were questionable, and by mid-August, it was clear that if there ever was a three-way deal, it was over. All recruiting was suspended on July 30, with Prigozhin claiming they had “plenty” of mercenaries in their ranks. Wagnerites that had arrived two weeks earlier were leaving Belarus due to deployments in Libya, recruitment efforts by other PMCs, or a lack of pay as Wagner’s finances fell apart.

Prigozhin also stunned analysts and his detractors when he appeared in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 28 at the periphery of the Russia-Africa Summit. The sting of the non-response from the Kremlin over the dead Russian airman was barely a month old, and some publicly wondered how Prigozhin, who was supposedly exiled, could be walking around in St. Petersburg as a free man.

On August 23, just hours after General Surovikin was formerly dismissed as the commander of the Russian VKS, Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600 private jet was either shot down or destroyed by an explosive device over the Tver region of Russia while it was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It is reported that Prigozhin, who carefully guarded his travel plans, decided at the last minute not to swap to the second private jet operated by PMC Wagner, an Embraer Legacy 650, that was also bound for St. Petersburg.

Ten people were killed, including the pilot, co-pilot, and a flight attendant operating on a one-day contract because she needed to travel to St. Petersburg. Among the seven members of PMC Wagner that were killed,

  • Yevgeny Prigozhin – figurehead and leader focusing on media, social media, psychological operations, and commercial catering
  • Dmitry Utkin – creator of the name “Wagner,” known white nationalist, and the military leader of PMC Wagner
  • Valery Chekalov – Head of logistics operating under the title of “business advisor”

None of the dead have been officially identified, but President Putin referred to Prigozhin in the past tense in a formal statement, as did Kadyrov. The Wagner Group’s Council of Commanders declared they would not make a formal statement until after the Kremlin provided its official reason for the downing of the airplane.

Of the eight Russian military and mercenary leaders who achieved key objectives since February 24, 2022, three are dead, two are held in custody, one is missing, one was dismissed, and one, General Lapin, was reassigned. Putin’s protection of Shoigu and Gerasimov is unwavering despite their unwavering loyalty, despite the documented corruption and repeated mistakes. For any other Russian or Russian-aligned senior military leader who finds success on the battlefield in Ukraine, it comes with the occupational hazard of falling out of favor or, worse, from the sky.

National, Russia-Ukraine War

Russia-Ukraine War Update for July 6, 2022

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[KYIV, Ukraine] – MTN It has been 19 weeks since the Russia-Ukraine war started and 3,050 days since Russia occupied Crimea on February 27, 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s previously announced scaleback of the war in Ukraine, limiting total victory to securing the Donbas, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, as well as securing the land bridge to Crimea, has been pushed aside. Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and the Russian Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu declared the Russian army will continue the “special military operation” in Ukraine until the tasks set by President Putin are “fully completed.”

Chairman of the Chechen Parliament Magomed Daudov declared a jihad in Ukraine to defend Muslims in Europe during a visit to Lysychansk.

Severodonetsk – Lysychansk – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that the Luhansk oblast had been captured was spoiled less than 24 hours later, with Ukrainian forces contesting the settlement of Bilohorivka [Luhansk].

Pro-Russian accounts and the Kremlin reported that “cleansing” was continuing south of Lysychansk to clear the area of remaining Ukrainian troops. There continues to be no evidence that Russian forces captured significant numbers of Ukrainian troops, weapons, or ammunition in Severodonetsk, Zolote-Hirske, or Lysychansk.

There was limited fighting west of Popasna, with Russian forces likely securing the settlement of Spirne.

Northeast Donetsk – Private Military Company (PMC) Wagner Group, supported by the terrorist organization Imperial Legion and Russian artillery, captured Klynove, east of Bakhmut.

Russian forces are likely attempting to collapse the Svitlodarsk bulge, launching an offensive toward Vershyna. They were unsuccessful. Fighting continued in Novoluhanske and at the Vuhledar Power Plant.

Southwest Donetsk and Zaporizhia – The 1st Army Corps of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) recaptured the settlement of Novobakhmutivka, southwest of Horlivka.

Northeast of Donetsk city, a video from Russian state media showed that Ukrainian forces collapsed a small Russian-controlled salient south of Pisky and are in control of the Russian defensive positions.

In Donetsk city, a Russian ammunition depot stored in a heavy truck dealership was destroyed by a Ukrainian artillery strike. There were multiple secondary explosions. Ukrainian forces also destroyed a large ammunition depot near the railroad station in Donetsk, with multiple secondary explosions after the strike.

There were reports of fresh explosions in the port of Berdyansk. Russian and Ukrainian officials have stated this is related to unstable munitions exploding during an attempted recovery of the Large Landing Ship (LLS) Saratov, which sank on March 24. The Saratov was hit by a Tochka-U missile which damaged two more LLS vessels and heavily damaged a cargo ship.

In Zaporizhia, Ukrainian forces continue to advance on Polohy. Fighting and artillery strikes were reported in Novopokrovka.

Kherson – The Ukrainian counteroffensive continued in Kherson, with significant gains made. Ukrainian forces liberated Myrne, northwest of Kherson. Russian forces suffered significant losses near Tomyna Balka from artillery fire and air strikes.

Satellite images from July 5 show the airport and Russian base at Chornobaivka suffered heavy damage after two ammunition depots were destroyed days apart. The Russian base appeared abandoned.

Multiple videos showed fighting and artillery exchanges on the northern edge of Snihurivka, with Ukrainian forces 3 kilometers north of the city limits. The Ukrainian air force also attacked Russian defensive positions.

Ukrainian forces reestablished a wet crossing over the Inhulets River near Velke Artakove and Bila Krynytsya. The settlements of Lozove and Bilohirka are under Ukrainian control. Pro-Russian accounts reported that Ukrainian forces had pushed to Sukhyi Stavok, almost 10 kilometers south. There were reports of renewed fighting in Davydiv Brid. A Russian ammunition depot in Velkya Oleksandrivka was destroyed.

In the north region of the Kherson oblast, Ukrainian forces collapsed the Vysokopillya salient, liberating the settlement of Olhyne. Intense fighting in Arkhanhelske continued, with a Russian ammunition depot destroyed on July 5. Ukrainian forces fired artillery at Russian troops retreating from Olhyne, northeast of Novopetrivka.

Mykolaiv – Three Russian cruise missiles struck the city of Mykolaiv.

Kharkiv – Northwest of Kharkiv, Russian forces launched attacks in three directions from the stronghold in Kozacha Lopan on the settlements of Sosnivka, Prudyanka, and Dementiivka. None of the attacks were successful.

In Northeast Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces started interdicting the Russian Belgorod-Kupyansk Ground Line of Communication (GLOC – aka supply line) with an artillery strike on Velykyi Burluk.

Izyum – Russian forces attempted to advance on Dolyna and Krasnopillya and suffered heavy losses. Ukrainian artillery hit Russian positions in Dovhenke and Sosnove, destroying Main Battle Tanks (MBT), Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), and support vehicles. Russian forces also attempted to advance southeast of Velyka Komyshuvahka and suffered significant losses.

In Northeast Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces started interdicting the Russian Belgorod-Kupyansk Ground Line of Communication (GLOC – aka supply line) with an artillery strike on Velykyi Burluk.

Chernihiv – Russian forces shelled and used MLRS on the border villages of Mkhy and Bleshnia in the northern region of Chernihiv.

Sumy – Russian helicopters fired rockets at the Esman in the Sumy oblast.

Odesa – Black Sea – Ukrainian air defenses intercepted three Russian cruise missiles near Odesa.

Western Ukraine – Three Russian cruise missiles struck the Yarmolyntsi in the Khmelnytskyi oblast.

Daily Assessment

  1. Phase 2 of the Russia-Ukraine War is over.
  2. Russian ground forces in eastern Ukraine appear to be in an operational pause.
  3. We cannot determine if the significant reduction in artillery fire in the northeastern region of the Donetsk oblast is due to this pause or interdiction of Russian supplies.
  4. Russian forces are struggling in Kherson, where Ukrainian forces are making steady territorial gains from the north, the west, and the southeast.
  5. Russia’s reset of its operational goals in Ukraine will be impossible to achieve without a formal declaration of war and full mobilization.
  6. The Kremlin is likely hoping to wear down western support by extending the war and capitalize on a looming leadership change in the United Kingdom and politically driven unrest in the United States, which closely resembles the start of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland.
  7. It is yet to be seen if Ukraine will hold a defensive position in Siversk or fall back to the Slovyansk-Karmatorsk-Soledar-Bakhmut line.

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National, Russia-Ukraine War

Russia-Ukraine War Update for July 5, 2022

[KYIV, Ukraine] – MTN It has been 3,049 days since Russia occupied Crimea on February 27, 2014.

Severodonetsk – Lysychansk – Russian forces have secured the Luhansk oblast. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory after the Russian Federation Armed Forces secured the region 131 days after the widescale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shogui that the units in Luhansk “should rescue [and] increase their combat capabilities.”

It took 100 days for Russian, Russian proxy forces, and Russia-backed militias to secure the last 7% of the Luhansk Oblast. The Russian military will likely start to work to establish administrative control of Severodoentsk and Lysychansk. The cities of Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and Popasna had a combined pre-war population of 293,500. It is estimated that 18,500 civilians remain, with the rest fleeing the area – some into Russia and others into Ukraine. Most of those who stayed behind supported the Russian invasion or were poor, disabled, or didn’t want to leave their homes.

Northeast Donetsk – In the Siversk region, Russian forces have advanced over the T-1302 Highway and taken partial control of Spirne.

Widescale artillery barrages occurred through the region, including Bilohorivka [Donetsk] and Verkhonkamyanska. Other settlements shelled include Ivano-Daryivka and Berestove.

NASA FIRMS data suggest that the town of Raihorodok has been shelled.

In the Bakhmut-Soledar region, the settlements of Pokrovske and Soledar were shelled.

Fighting continued In the Svitlodarsk bulge for control of the Vuhlehar Power Plant and Russian forces shelling Kodema. Russian forces are attempting to take control of Novoluhanske, southeast of the power plant and on the reservoir’s western shore.

Based on this intelligence, we maintain that Dolomitne is contested, and we are coding Novoluhanske as contested.

Southwest Donetsk and Zaporizhia – There were scattered artillery exchanges from Horlivka to Donetsk city to Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk Oblast and Hulyaipole to Orikhiv in the Zaporizhia Oblast. There were reports of fighting near Rivnopil, but we could not verify the veracity of the reports.

We consider Bilohirya, Luhivske, Novopokrovka, Bahate, and Ukraniske, Rivnopil, Pyatkhatky, and Stepove [Zaporizhia] as contested.

Kherson – Russian forces continue to take a defensive posture and are attempting to slow the broad advance of Ukrainian forces.

Russian forces are attempting to interdict Ukrainian Ground Lines of Communication (GLOC – aka supply lines) and firing artillery, Grad, and Smerch rockets from Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS).

Russian forces shelled Myrne northwest of Kherson, which would indicate the settlement is contested. There are reports that Pravdyne was liberated, and Myrne and Parysheve are contested. We cannot verify the veracity of these reports. However, the report of Myrne being shelled supports the settlement is contested.

Ukraine shelled the Russian-controlled settlements of Shyroka Balka, Sofiivka, and Krytyi Yar.

In the northern region of Kherson, Topolyne, Ivanivka, Knyazivka, Potomkyne, Dobryanka, Trudolyubivka, and Osokorivka were shelled by Russian forces.

Ukraine shelled the Russian-controlled settlements of Sukhyi Stavok, Lozove, Davydiv Brid, Velkya Oleksandrivka, and Novopetrivka.

There are reports that Ukrainian forces are in Lozove. We cannot confirm the veracity of these reports. There was a drone video that showed Russian troops being killed by small arms fire. The distance from the Inhulets River was over 700 meters. There may be Ukrainian Special Operation Forces on the east side of the river, but we don’t believe this indicates there is a more significant force in the immediate area.

Russian Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters fired on Zarichne and Olhyne. On July 3, there was evidence of significant fighting in Olhyne, and we have coded the settlement as contested based on this intelligence update. If Ukrainian forces liberate Olhyne, it will represent the full collapse of the Vysokopillya salient.

Mykolaiv – The settlements of Lupareve, Shevchenkove, Chervona Dolyna, Kobzartsi, Partyzanske, and Bereznehuvate were shelled. There were no reports of cruise missile attacks.

Kharkiv – Northwest of Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces did reconnaissance in force toward Kozacha Lopan from Sosnivka, likely to harass Russian positions. There were no other offensive operations in the area. There was scattered artillery fire along the rest of the line of conflict.

Izyum – Russian forces attempted to advance on Dolyna and Mazanivka. In Dolyna, they were unsuccessful, and in Mazanivka, they moved the line of conflict to the settlement’s northern border. Russian forces attempted to advance on Virnopillya and suffered heavy losses, including eight armored vehicles.

Sumy – Russian forces continue firing at settlements across the international border in the Sumy oblast. A school was destroyed in Esman, and public utility infrastructure was destroyed in Nova Sloboda. Bilopillia was hit with at least 25 mortar shells and five missiles, injuring two people.

Chernihiv – Russian troops fired across the international border at the settlements of Mkhy and Zalizniy Mist. There were no reports of injuries or significant damage.

Odesa – Black Sea – A Ukrainian flag was dropped on Snake Island, symbolically taking control of the strategically important dot in the Black Sea.

Daily Assessment

  1. President Putin’s declaration of “rest” is not a charitable order from a benevolent leader but a tacit admission that Russian, Russian proxy forces, and Russia-backed separatists of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics have exhausted their combat strength and need to reconstitute.
  2. Russian forces continue to be pressured in the Kherson oblast and struggle to hold the line of conflict.
  3. Germany announced they are providing Ukraine with four additional M270 HIMARS systems and upgraded the software to work with the Ukrainian fire control systems.
  4. Ukrainian forces are using NATO-provided guided munitions fired from HIMARS to destroy multiple military targets a day.
  5. It is yet to be seen if Ukraine will hold a defensive position in Siversk or fall back to the Slovyansk-Karmatorsk-Soledar-Bakhmut line.

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