Although the results of the Ukrainian counter-offensive are meager after a week, the operation so far seems to be rubbing off on the top Russian military leaders, both physically and in terms of prestige, but in another field, that of the information.
Russian media pretended to be Ukrainian media and speculated yesterday that General Adam Delimkhanov was wounded or dead. The bearded Delimkhanov, a former Chechen independentist recycled as a Duma parliamentarian in Moscow, is the head of the Chechen division of the National Guard and number two of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. In the Ukrainian war, he took an important part in the siege of Mariupol.
After hours of uncertainty, Kadyrov said that his beloved Delimkhanov was as fresh as a rose, "and he's not even injured." According to the rumor that ran, Delimkhanov would have fallen during an attack against the Chechen paramilitary group Akhmat in Primorsk, on the coast of the Sea of Azov and far from the front.
At least for a while Delimkhanov must have been untraceable, because Kadyrov himself acknowledged that he had asked the Ukrainians for help in locating him. And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference: “We received this information with great concern; we were worried, like everyone else, about the Hero of Russia".
On the other hand, Moscow continued yesterday not to confirm the death of the decorated general of division Sergei Goriachev on the Zaporizhia front, although one of the pro-Russian authorities in the occupied zone, Vladimir Rogov, communicated his death in a message of condolence on Telegram. He did so after one of the most prestigious Russian military bloggers broke the news, which was followed by others. Goriachev, 52 and head of the 35th Combined Arms Army, may have been the victim of a Ukrainian attack with Storm Shadow missiles (which Ukraine recently received) and would be the first Russian general to die this year.
Russian military bloggers, some of whom often work from the front lines, have become the most reliable Russian sources as they take a critical view of the course of military operations. Thus, it is not surprising that Vladimir Putin met on Tuesday with war correspondents and bloggers, probably to avoid more bloodshed, and criticized the "parquet generals".
Thus, if yesterday's social networks were confirmed, including the Gray Zone channel, close to the Wagner Group, they could be the ruin for a very questionable general. Ukrainian Himars missiles would have caused a massacre on the Kreminna front, in the province of and one of the most active in Donbass. There was talk of a hundred soldiers dead and others wounded, and the reason would be that they were ordered to concentrate to listen to the harangue of their general. They would have been waiting for two hours until the shells fell.
The major general responsible for keeping a large troop concentrated too close to the front (even though the Himars have an approximate range of 80 kilometers) would be the Chechen Sakhrab Akhmedov, commander of the 20th Army. Akhmedov has a reputation that earned him written complaints from his soldiers, who accused him, along with another Chechen general, Rustam Muradov, of using him as cannon fodder and killing 300 soldiers in four days. It happened in November in the battle of Pavlivka-Vuhledar, one of the most disastrous offensives of the Russian forces, which cost 900 casualties in three months.
However, Akhmedov and Muradov were promoted in February. According to Gray Zone, based on “falsified reports”.
