What's going on in Moscow
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They're not talking. This is not good.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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@Mik said in What's going on in Moscow:
They're not talking. This is not good.
I posted on the rather strange absence of the two men at the top of Russia’s military hierarchy. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov dropped out of sight on March 11. Considering Russia is at war, this seemed most odd...
I speculated earlier today that one of the reasons Shoigu and Gerasimov were refusing to talk to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley might be because they were no longer the incumbents.
Sergei Surfaces: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/russian-defence-minister-resurfaces-on-tv-but-for-just-a-few-seconds
For just a few seconds on Thursday, Sergei Shoigu was back on Russians’ television screens, sitting in the corner box of a teleconference with Vladimir Putin.
The Russian defence minister, arguably the man most responsible for the floundering war effort in Ukraine, had not been seen in public for 12 days. Nor had the chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, Valery Gerasimov.
By Thursday, the matter was being brought up at a daily press call held by the Kremlin.
“The defence minister has a lot to deal with right now, as you can understand,” Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said during a briefing, denying Shoigu was ill. “A special military operation is ongoing. Certainly, now isn’t exactly the right time for media activities. This is quite understandable.”
Sensing a problem, the Kremlin promptly returned Shoigu to television. The clip released on Thursday was unusual: a security council teleconference with Vladimir Putin, where Shoigu was said to have reported “progress in the special military operation and efforts being made by the military to provide humanitarian aid, ensure security, and restore vital infrastructure on the liberated territories”.
But you wouldn’t know that because the sound was turned off. And Shoigu appeared for just seconds, as his camera was briefly unblocked to reveal him sitting in front of several Russian flags at an undisclosed location. His arm moved, proving it wasn’t just a picture of the defence minister returned to television to dispel rumours about his demise.
And then, just as quickly, he was gone again.
And some others point out that this appearance by Shoigu looks identical to his last known appearance on television.
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Putin's 'purge': Russia's top commander Valery Gerasimov 'is suspended'
Russia's top commander General Valery Gerasimov has been suspended, a top adviser to the Ukrainian president has claimed, while a clutch of other officers have been sacked or arrested amid a rumoured purge of top brass.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of military intelligence and one of President Zelensky's inner circle, claimed late Wednesday that Gerasimov - the chief of staff of the Russian army - has been suspended as Putin looks for senior commanders to blame over his blundering invasion of Ukraine.
Arestovych, speaking to dissident Russian lawyer and politician Mark Feygin on YouTube last night, said: 'According to preliminary information, Gerasimov has been de-facto suspended. They are deciding whether to give him time to fix things, or not.'
He added: 'The commander of the first tank army of the western military district Lieutenant General Sergei Kisel has also been arrested and fired after the first tank army was defeated near Kharkiv.'
Two further army commanders have been fired due to heavy battlefield losses, according to information released on a Telegram channel run by the Ukrainian interior ministry, which also claimed the commander of the Black Sea fleet has been sacked and arrested and his vice admiral has been placed under investigation.
Arestovych stressed that his information is 'preliminary', but it comes after Gerasimov failed to appear during Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow on Monday which he was widely expected to attend. It also comes after he was reportedly wounded by shrapnel in Ukraine when Putin sent him there in order to turn the war around.
Putin's army - once championed as the world's second-best - has been handed a series of humiliating battlefield defeats in just two months of fighting in Ukraine that has seen more than 10,000 troops killed, hundreds of tanks destroyed, its Black Sea flagship sunk and Russia's international standing trashed.
Just yesterday, it was revealed that Russian troops were massacred while trying to cross a river in the Donbas after Ukraine discovered their sneak-attack and unleashed an artillery barrage that destroyed at least 58 vehicles.
Yeah, something to warm your cockles...
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@Mik said in What's going on in Moscow:
How much longer can this go on without bleeding the nation dry?
I think that President Putin is taking into account "sunk costs" when looking forward about the war, which is just about the worst thing he can do.
