Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ quizzed over his involvement in Prigozhin’s rebellion

MOSCOW – Investigators have questioned one of Russia’s top generals about

the failed mutiny

that presented the greatest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century rule.

General Sergei Surovikin was quizzed by military prosecutors over several days about his links to Wagner mercenary leader

Yevgeny Prigozhin

, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is sensitive. The general is being kept in one place but isn’t in prison, the person said.

General Surovikin, 56, hasn’t been seen since the end of Saturday’s rebellion by Wagner mercenaries that Mr Putin said brought Russia to the brink of “civil war”.

The uprising shattered Mr Putin’s image as an invincible leader after Wagner’s forces raced to within 200km of Moscow virtually unchallenged before Prigozhin called a halt.

The crisis has left the US, Europe and China puzzling over the political fallout from the rebellion, which highlighted bitter divisions in Russia over how to fight the faltering war in Ukraine that’s the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. A Ukrainian counteroffensive is pushing to oust Russia from occupied territories.

Mr Putin put General Surovikin in charge of Russia’s army in Ukraine in October and he oversaw the retreat by Russian troops from the Ukrainian city of Kherson the following month. 

The general was replaced as overall commander in January by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, one of two men along with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu that Prigozhin had vowed to oust during his rebellion.

Prigozhin has repeatedly heaped praise on General Surovikin’s military leadership in the war, while sharply criticising the Defence Ministry’s other top officials.

The general was last seen in a video posted on the Defence Ministry’s Telegram channel on Saturday urging Prigozhin and his forces to stop their uprising and to “obey the will and order” of the president.

General Surovikin is a career military officer with a fearsome reputation that earned him the nickname “General Armageddon”. He commanded Russian operations in Syria to crush opposition groups fighting President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. 

He was sanctioned by the European Union in February last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.

He commanded tanks that were sent into Moscow in 1991 to support the attempted coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by Communist hardliners.

General Surovikin was jailed, then later pardoned and released.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Thursday when asked by reporters on a conference call whether General Surovikin had been dismissed or detained, saying they should contact the Defence Ministry, according to the Interfax news service.

Prigozhin ended his revolt after accepting a deal with Mr Putin brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that allowed him to go to the neighbouring country, after criminal charges were dropped against the Wagner founder and his fighters.

Wagner’s heavily armed troops took control of Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don and moved rapidly towards Moscow across 780km of territory during a period of 24 hours, blockading army units along the way without significant resistance. BLOOMBERG