Russian Chief of Army Staff Valeri Gerasimov was not at the side of Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the commemorations of May 9, this Monday, AFP reports.
Since March 11, Russian Chief of Army Staff Valeri Gerasimov has simply disappeared from the public sphere. Was he injured in a Ukrainian attack, as some media suggest?
Where is General Valery Gerasimov? His absence from the great military parade in Red Square this May 9 surprised more than one. Why was the Russian army chief of staff not with Vladimir Putin for this symbolic military event on Monday? More and more experts are wondering about the reasons for this very noticeable absence, such as Max Seddo, journalist and head of the Financial Times agency in Moscow, or Cédric Mas, military historian and president of the Action Institute Resilience, AFP added.
Russian Chief of Army Staff although accustomed to the media, is also close to Vladimir Putin. He is also considered the number 3 in the planning of the invasion of Ukraine, after Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. If the latter was well seated near the Russian head of state on Monday morning, General Valeri Gerasimov has not been seen in public for almost two months.
A Pentagon official indicated, in early May in the columns of the New York Times , that this senior Russian army officer had gone to the front line to meet the troops in Donbass at the end of April. However, he does not confirm the rumours that he was injured by the Ukrainian attack which killed some 200 people on the site he was visiting that day.
“What we can confirm is that for several days last week he (Valeri Gerasimov) was in the Donbass,” a senior US defense official reportedly told the US daily on May 1. “We don’t think he’s still there. We think he’s gone and is back in Russia,” the official added.
The army chief targeted by an attack in Izium?
The New York Times reported that the Chief of General Staff of the Russian armed forces had been sent to the front line in the Donbass to assess the advance of the troops, judged to be struggling in recent weeks. “Our assumption is that he went there because they haven’t solved all their problems yet,” said American sources who preferred to remain anonymous.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials confirmed that they launched an attack that day against a military command center in Izium, a town near Kharkiv controlled by the Russian military in eastern Ukraine. According to the newspaper, this attack was planned precisely because General Valery Gerasimov was planning to go there. If about 200 Russian soldiers were killed in this attack , Valeri Gerasimov had already left the scene when the bulk of the offensive was launched, an anonymous Ukrainian official reported to the New York Times in early May.
Was he injured in the attack? It’s a rumor that has been circulating since early May in some media, including the British tabloid The Daily Mail . A former Russian interior minister reportedly told the newspaper that Valeri Gerasimov had been injured in the leg by shrapnel that day. So far, Moscow has not confirmed this information, and the Pentagon has not been able to confirm it either.
Previous speculation about the fate of Sergei Shoigu
The last time this loyal to Vladimir Putin was seen alongside Vladimir Putin dates back to February 27, in a video during which we see him at the end of an interminable table, listening to the Russian president speak out for the “update on alert from the country’s nuclear deterrents”.
This 67-year-old soldier, formerly of the Red Army, served as a general in the war in Chechnya at the turn of the years 1990-2000, as well as in the operations carried out in the Donbass and in Crimea in 2014.
The fate of Valeri Gerasimov is not the only one to have raised questions since the start of the Russian invasion. Concern had begun to dawn in early March for the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. Indeed, Sergei Shoigu was not seen for about 15 days, and the Kremlin then had to react to reassure public opinion, which was beginning to wonder. Vladimir Putin’s entourage had initially assured that the Minister of Defense had just made a report on the Ukrainian situation , without however producing any evidence or image. The Russian Minister of Defense however reappeared on the screens several weeks later, on March 27, during a televised address.
(AFP)