General Sergei Surovikin, who has been missing since the attempted uprising by the Wagner group and had links to the uprising, “rested,” assured the chairman of the Russian parliament’s Defense Committee on Wednesday.
“He is resting. He is not available at the moment,” Andrei Kartapolov emphasized on the Shot channel of the Telegram social network.
According to the Russian media outlet Verstka, Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, has been detained by the Russian security services for his alleged involvement in the uprising of the Wagner group mercenaries on June 24.
At the same time, the general has not yet been officially charged, the digital diary emphasizes.
The Kremlin has not yet commented on information about Surovikin’s possible detention, although it began circulating shortly after the end of the Wagner group’s attempted mutiny.
The first to announce Surovikin’s alleged arrest was military blogger Vladimir Romanov, who specified that the general had been arrested on June 25, the day after the failed uprising.
According to various media, Surovikin was also unable to communicate with his family, although on June 29, the general’s daughter denied her father’s arrest and assured that he was at “his place of work”.
The mercenaries of the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeni Prigozhin, staged an attempted revolt in late June that was cut short when a military column approached Moscow to depose the military leadership, as a result of mediation by the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
To avoid criminal prosecution, the paramilitary organization agreed to disarm and hand over its military equipment to the Russian armed forces.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced today that it has received more than 2,000 military equipment, 2,500 tons of ammunition and 20,000 small arms from the Wagner paramilitary group, thanks to the agreement reached after the aborted June uprising.
Under the agreement, Prigozhin and some of his men could be transferred to Belarus or integrated into the regular Russian armed forces.
But so far the mercenaries have not yet appeared in their assigned camp in Belarus, and according to a commander of the Wagner group, in an interview with a Russian journalist quoted by the EFE bureau, Prigozhin offered his soldiers vacation until August.
The Wagner group has been at the forefront since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, and has played a leading role in the capture of Bakhmut, in Donetsk province (east), in the longest and most bloody battle of this war , at the cost of many losses, amid open accusations by Prigozhin of lack of military support from Moscow.
Source: DN
