Purging the ranks

The Wall Street Journal reports that General Sergey Surovikin was detained and interrogated in Moscow, while the other high-ranking officers were suspended or fired.

The newspaper’s sources say at least 13 top officers were detained following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection.

One of them was Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces and Deputy Chief of Russian troops in Ukraine Sergey Surovikin. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) began to detain people several hours after the end of the mercenaries’ march on Moscow. One of the sources claims that the detentions were explained by the purge of the army ranks from those who were no longer considered trustworthy. Around 15 Russian officers were either suspended or fired, WSJ reports.

According to the newspaper’s sources, general Surovikin is in custody in Moscow, but he has not been placed in a detention facility. He has been interrogated about the Wagner’s march on Moscow multiple times.

Another source told WSJ that Surovikin was aware of the mutiny plans but did not participate in it. No official charges have been brought up against Surovikin.

According to The Wall Street Journal, other high-ranking military commanders were detained following Prigozhin’s rebellion. Among them are Surovikin’s deputy, colonel general Andrey Yudin, and first deputy head of the Main Directorate of Russia’s General Staff Vladimir Alexeyev.

Alexeyev has long-standing contacts with the Wagner members; he was overseeing the Wagner Group’s activity as a military intelligence officer. These generals were not detained, but they remain under surveillance. Furthermore, colonel general in reserve Mikhail Mizintsev, who previously served as deputy defence minister, was detained and questioned. Mizintsev is known as the “butcher of Mariupol” — he was the one to lead the deadly siege of Ukraine’s Mariupol. In April 2023, he left the Defence Ministry and joined the Wagner Group.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, their meeting lasted three hours.

Sergey Surovikin hasn’t been seen in public since the morning of 24 June, when he addressed the participants of Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, demanding they stop.

On 28 June, The Moscow Times reported, citing sources within the Russian Defence Ministry, that the army general could have been detained. Later, the same was reported by Western media, including The Financial Times.

Bloomberg reported that the military prosecutor’s office interrogated Surovikin several times regarding his connection to Prigozhin. Still, the general wasn’t placed under house arrest, but he is not allowed to travel freely. Former editor-in-chief of the Echo of Moscow radio station Alexey Venediktov said that Surovikin was placed on a “sabbatical”. However, according to the journalist, the general didn’t contact neither his wife nor his daughter on their birthdays at the beginning of July.

On 29 June, Surovikin’s daughter Veronika told Telegram channel Baza that her father had not been arrested and that he was at his office. On 12 July, media outlet Verstka reported that Surovikin had been detained by the Russian counterintelligence. According to Verstka’s source, Surovikin was “put in isolation” and was unable to contact his relatives for two weeks by that point.

On the same day, head of the State Duma defence committee Andrey Kartapolov declared that Surovikin was “resting for now, he’s unreachable”.

Coordinated rebellion

On 14 July, Novaya Gazeta published a story which, among other things, contained claims that Wagner’s mutiny and the capture of Rostov-on-Don by the mercenaries had been engineered by the government in the first place.

Novaya reports. “We’ll risk saying that the rebellion is not Prigozhin’s whim but a plan that results from the Wagner Group’s previous actions. Wagner convoys, ostensibly no longer under control of the government, were supposed to basically relocate to a place better fit for an offensive from a tactical point of view, all under the guise of a rebellion. History will soon show us whether this was a march on Moscow or preparations for an offensive on Kyiv from the Belarusian grounds, with the government being able to say that the Wagner Group was acting on its own, that its relationship with Wagner has been terminated, and that it is not accountable for its actions.”

According to Novaya Gazeta, the plan was ruined because of the shot down helicopters and the Ilyushin Il-22 jet as well as the killed pilots. That was not part of the plan. When the president found out about the deaths of crew members and the destruction of aircraft, he made the decision to scrap the march “for justice”. The rebellion project was folded in just a few hours.

Novaya also reports that Sergey Surovikin is currently not in custody of the special forces. He hasn’t been arrested or detained. As of now, the general “is out of reach of Russian law enforcement, and it will depend only on Surovikin himself whether he’ll return under their control or not”.

Not the time for dismissals

“Judging by Vladimir Putin’s comments following the meeting with PMC Wagner’s commanders, he is trying, as he’s known to do, to gauge everything that’s happened within the framework of Russian law,” special correspondent for BBC News Russian Ilya Barabanov tells Novaya-Europe. “There cannot be accountability for the PMC in connection with the rebellion because there are no private military companies in the Russian legislature.”

“However, the work of this unofficial organisation was overseen and controlled by the Russian military, including its top officers,” Barabanov says. He adds that the FSB counterintelligence will definitely have questions towards these officers following the insurrection.

Barabanov has not been able to confirm whether the 13 generals WSJ reported on were actually detained. But the fact remains that military officers are being actively investigated, he adds.

Ilya Barabanov recalls that in May, after Dmitry Mishov, a Russian military pilot, had fled abroad, the FSB detectives brought four military pilots from the front line in for questioning. Such a big event as Prigozhin’s rebellion should have led to mass investigations within the army, Barabanov notes.

“Whether the generals have been detained or not is not known for certain,” he says. “But it’s clear that a large number of commanders of varying rank could have been brought in for questioning. We’ll find out after a while what decisions were made following these interrogations.”

Novaya-Europe’s sources within the Russian military say that hundreds of senior and top officers were likely questioned.

“Surovikin, Mizintsev, and Alexeyev were questioned due to their close ties to Prigozhin,” our source in the Russian army explains.

says the source.

“Vladimir Alexeyev, who was seen happily chatting with Prigozhin at the captured [by Wagner] HQ of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, was the military intelligence [officer] responsible for overseeing the PMC for many years. The Main Intelligence Directorate bases were used to recruit and train the mercenaries. So, there could be formal questions towards Alexeyev. But as far as I understand, for now he’s only been prohibited from leaving the country. According to the defence ministry rumours, no decisions have been made on punishments when it comes to other possible accomplices of the so-called rebellion. I don’t think anyone will be imprisoned or fired. Now is not the time to be losing military commanders. They could threaten them with retirement or other sanctions, but eventually everything will, most likely, be swept under the rug.”