- A top Russian general in Ukraine is accusing the Kremlin of "decapitating" the war effort.
- Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov said he was giving honest feedback to his bosses, and was immediately fired.
One of Russia's top generals said he was relieved of his command after questioning the Defense Ministry's management of the war, and then accused his superiors of backstabbing the country's army.
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, who was in charge of the 58th Combined Arms Army in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, published a voice note discussing his dismissal and how he criticized his superiors.
The voice note was on Wednesday posted by the Telegram channels of several Russian military bloggers, as well as a channel run by Andrey Gurulev, a member of the Russian state duma and a retired general.
In his voice note, Popov said he was faced with the choice of either telling his bosses what they wanted to hear or to "call a spade a spade."
Popov said he decided to question the Kremlin over Russia's lack of counter-battery combat capabilities, the absence of artillery reconnaissance stations, and the mass Russian casualties that have resulted from this shortfall.
He added that he urged his superiors to rotate troops and relieve those who had fought on the frontlines for a long time.
According to Popov, he was immediately fired from his post by Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov.
"As many commanders of divisional regiments said today, the servicemen of the armed forces of Ukraine could not break through our army from the front," Popov said in his voice note, according to a translation by CNN. "Our senior commander hit us from the rear, treacherously and vilely decapitating the army at the most difficult and tense moment."
As of Wednesday evening, neither the Russian state media nor the Defense Ministry has commented on Popov's remarks, whether he has been fired, or on the circumstances of such a dismissal.
Russia's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Popov's claims come as Russia loses another top commander
In 2022, Popov was the commander of Russia's forces in Balakliya, a region in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, according to documents retrieved by Reuters. His troops were pushed out of Kharkiv in September by Kyiv's forces in a messy retreat that the Kremlin called an effort to "regroup."
Popov was then given command of Russia's 58th Army in Zaporizhzhia. In comments to state media on June 8, Popov said his forces had repelled Ukrainian forces there amid Kyiv's counteroffensive.
His claims of getting dismissed from the army come as Ukraine said it killed another of Russia's most senior war commanders, Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov, in a missile strike on Monday in Berdiansk. Gurulyov, the state duma member who published Popov's voice note, confirmed to Russian state TV on Wednesday that Tsokov was killed.
Tsokov was the deputy commander of Russia's southern military district.
Meanwhile, Gen. Sergei Surovikin has been missing since the Wagner Group's short-lived rebellion in late June, The New York Times reported.
He was in charge of Russia's operations in Ukraine from October 2022 to January 2023, until Gerasimov assumed command. Surovikin was then designated as one of Gerasimov's three deputies.
When asked on Wednesday about Surovikin's whereabouts, the head of the Russian Duma's defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, told a reporter that he was "taking a rest" and is "unavailable right now."
The Times reported earlier that Surovikin knew of Wagner's mutiny before it happened.