Putin ordered a brutal hunt for officials for treason

When the Russian informed his generals about the plan to invade Ukraine, everything seemed very easy, but the current circumstances show a complex scenario that has spread over time, giving rise to a situation that was not in the Kremlin's plans.

One month after the start of the operation, as the days go by, Moscow's military power is felt beyond the fierce resistance of the defenders, testifying to this the destruction caused by Russian bombings on various Ukrainian cities. Today, with the beginning of the siege of Kiev, the capital of the country; the fear is that a further escalation of violence will spread throughout Ukraine. However, despite the inexorable advance of the Moscow troops, the Russian campaign on Ukraine, at least in the first month of its inception, is for many a failure as originally planned.

Until this week Russia has officially lost seven of its Generals who were fighting in Ukraine; casualties occurred in less than a month. As confirmed by officials from Washington and the European Union (EU), these unexpected casualties of high-ranking officers must be added to serious operational failures. Among the most important, British intelligence pointed to the disorganization in communications and the lack of discipline of its soldiers as an element that prevented the rapid success of the invasion of Ukraine.

However, the most shocking event for Moscow was reported yesterday Friday by the British press noting that a senior Russian military official, the Colonel Yuri Medvechek, commander of an armored brigade, was killed by his own officers and soldiers in an act of revolt because of the losses suffered by a column of tanks in his charge, for which he was syndicated by his men as inoperative and cowardly for the deaths of several of his companions. The British version of the circumstances of Medvechek's death has not yet been confirmed or denied by Moscow. However, the horrifying details were confirmed by the correspondent of the Arab TV Network Al-Jazzera from Mariupol reporting that Medvechek was hit by a tank of his brigade led by a young lieutenant who literally crushed him when the officer was deliberately on his back passing over his body.

Also in the direction of what was officially reported by the Ukrainian government and a secretive report from Washington, the Ukrainian armed forces have caused, until March 24, the loss of 14,902 Russian soldiers who were neutralized since the beginning of the war. The US intelligence report also indicates that they have destroyed 1,674 troop carriers, 487 tanks, 249 artillery pieces, 62 fuel tank trucks, 82 multiple rocket launch systems, 123 helicopters, 102 aircraft, 52 anti-aircraft battery systems, 31 non-aerial vehicles manned (drones) and 2 ships were sunk, while the remaining 4 were damaged to a greater or lesser extent by modest Ukrainian aircraft.

Beyond these confirmed losses, one of the Kremlin's biggest concerns is the count of its generals killed in the theater of operations, since they were all commanders of two and three stars, including a Lieutenant General, which constitutes the highest level of casualties of senior officers in the Russian army since the Second World War. Even in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the loss of men and equipment to the Muslim mujahideen - who would later form the terrible terrorist organization Al-Qaeda and the Taliban - were extremely serious and ultimately resulted in a humiliating defeat and withdrawal from Moscow at that time, yet they had never recorded the loss of six of his Generals in 30 days of fighting.

In this direction, last Thursday, Mykhailo Podoliak, head of advisers on National Security to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, released a statement stating that Russian generals killed in combat fell because of undervaluing Ukrainian capabilities by using an obsolete communications system that allowed intercept them.

Western assessments of the deaths of Russian commanders are a little more realistic. A French diplomat, an expert in security, told the press in Paris last Wednesday that at least six Russian generals had indeed died in Ukraine. According to the French representative, five of these casualties were due to malfunctions of old Russian electronic communications equipment that were not properly operated and exposed the location of the military to attacks on their positions on the ground. The French diplomat said he was aware that Ukrainian authorities recorded the loss of a sixth Russian general, but that this commander fell as a result of a night operation by a sniper who managed to shoot him down from an unspecified distance, which also strongly draws attention in terms of non-observance of rules basic security measures in Russian military camps, especially during the night, when a sniper's operation reduces to 30% its chance of success in relation to an attack during daytime hours.

For NATO intelligence, Russian generals are fighting on the front lines in the face of various acts of indiscipline by young soldiers with little experience and the weakness of middle managers to lead them on the battlefield. In other words: Generals must go to the front line of battle to enforce their orders, which exposes them to greater risk than is normally observed in those military hierarchies.

At the same time, in Washington, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared on Wednesday that the smartest thing Moscow could do right now is to make the decision to end this conflict and cease military aggression against Ukraine. Also last Thursday, the British Ministry of Defense reported that gaining air traffic control was Russia's main objective during the early days of the conflict and its failure to do so exponentially reduced its operational military progress. That assessment is maintained even as the Russian military today surrounds Kiev, the Ukrainian capital and have taken over other strategically important cities where the resistance is still operating in guerrilla warfare mode.

This military scenario was very well described in the opinion of a Washington military experts who are members of the Institute for War Studies (ISW), who have pointed out in their statements that the Ukrainian armed forces and the reservist and civilian corps have defeated - at least initially - the Russian campaign launched by Vladimir Putin. Other Western military experts believe that Ukraine's campaign was aimed at a number of airborne and ground operations through its armored tank units to seize Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and other Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine in no more than 5 to 8 days. At the moment, such an operation failed miserably, the goal of the Russian forces has not been achieved in 30 days and they continue to move slowly given the Ukrainian resistance. Russian advances are being limited in some parts of the military theater, although they may eventually and within a few weeks achieve their goal if a ceasefire were not reached earlier, but it is clear that they have failed to capture their objectives according to the original plan.

Secretary Austin, speaking at a press conference in Bulgaria with Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, said that Russians have stagnantly stagnated on several fronts, which is true. In another answer to a question, whether Moscow would attempt to seize Odessa, Austin was cautious, saying that although he could not talk about Russian planning or strategy, it is clear that the tactics used until today also show no indication that Putin's troops are fulfilling their original plan when entering and occupying Ukraine. to depose his government. The proof that things did not go well militarily for the Russians is that they have used brutal techniques that look like the way they are attacking humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians and unarmed population centers, Austin added.

However, Russian forces continue their offensive, which in many cases has violated humanitarian aspects such as the right to war itself, this week the Ukrainian authorities accused the Russian army of indiscriminately bombing an Art School in which 430 people were refugees in the city of Mariupol, where the siege and brutal action by Russian troops would go down in history because of the credible suspicion of committing massive war crimes.

Local government officials in Mariupol confirmed that the Art School was completely destroyed and if there were any survivors, people stayed under the rubble of the building for too many hours without anything being able to be done to rescue them because of the intensity of the Russian artillery fire that prevented it; that there is no information on the fate of those refugees there prior to the attack, but it is believed that there were no survivors. It is believed that the destruction of the school, where civilians took refuge from the bombs, was caused by the impact of a Kinzhal missile - a destructive hypersonic speed weapon - never before fired in combat and even less against civilian areas that caused the devastation of the building and the almost certain death of the 450 civilians refugees there.

Another Western European intelligence source accessed by Infobae said that they electronically monitor military operations in Ukraine and have been able to access through unpublished satellite images the damage done in the school where there were only civilians, indicating that it is similar to the attack carried out last Saturday on a storage of Ukrainian weapons and ammunition in the west of the country and close to the border with Poland, so there is no doubt that both attacks used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles also against civilians who sought refuge in the school building, which constitutes a war crime.

Faced with this action, it is not surprising that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has asked to advance an investigation into war crimes and the use as a tool to generate terror of the rapes of girls and adult women that Russia would be perpetrating. With this, the problems that Vladimir Putin would face no longer focus only on his delayed and slow military operation to take over Ukraine or on the economic crisis that looms over Russia as a product of economic and financial sanctions.

While this is happening, silence is increasingly deafening within the Kremlin on the part of those officials who would not have dared to question the new “Tsar” Vladimir before, and everything seems to be growing day after day as many Russian mega-millionaires and middle political cadres in the Duma and Kremlin begin to worry. On the other hand, the latest round of sanctions, much tougher than those previously known, has been pushed by the EU and Washington in the framework of President Biden's trip to Europe this week, and they seem to be having a devastating effect on the Russian economy, which is dividing opinions within the Putin regime as never before. before among Russian officials who do not wish to remain in history as politicians of an economically broken country, much less as accomplices and war criminals. This situation within Russian politics has led to Putin ordering his secret services to brutal hunt for officials involved in what the president considers high treason.

Given this situation, NATO officials argue that there must be an understanding of the reasons for the first defections of political cadres from the Kremlin and some Russian mega-millionaires, several of whom have already left Moscow with their families and were sheltered by the European Union, which for the time being and for security reasons preserve their identities.

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