Major General Sergei Goryachev, chief of staff of Russia’s 35th Army, was killed in a missile strike in the Zaporizhia region, according to reports.
According to a Russian-backed figure in Ukraine, a top Russian officer was killed in a Ukrainian missile strike during Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russian soldiers.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in a part of the southern Zaporizhia region under Moscow’s control, said that Russian Major General Sergei Goryachev, Chief of Staff of Russia’s 35th Army, was killed a day earlier on the Zaporizhia front, where Ukrainian forces have been retaking some territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately confirm Major General Sergei Goryachev’s death.
Goryachev, 52, was a renowned soldier. According to Reuters, he served in the Second Chechen War, commanded a tank brigade, controlled a Russian military facility in Tajikistan, and led Russian soldiers in Moldova’s breakaway pro-Russian province of Transnistria.
If true, Goryachev’s killing represents the first Russian senior officer killed in Ukraine in nearly a year. “Voenkor Z,” a Russian war correspondent and military blogger, broke the news of his death first.
“The army has lost one of its smartest and most competent military commanders, who combined the finest professionalism with personal courage,” Rogov wrote on his official Telegram channel. “Our heartfelt sympathies to the deceased’s family and friends!”
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with 18 famous Russian military bloggers and war correspondents to boost his narrative about the conflict’s favorable development in Ukraine.
According to a renowned war monitor, the conference comes amid “widespread anger in the Russian information sphere” following drone assaults on Russian soil and border breaches by pro-Ukrainian but Russian armed organizations.
The Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted in a daily briefing paper on the Ukraine war that Russian “milbloggers” who have been more critical of Putin’s war efforts were not invited to the conversation.
The Russian president may be aware “that committed pro-war people” and the impact of military blogging are “his core constituency as he calls on the Russian population to prepare for a protracted conflict in Ukraine,” according to the ISW.
“Putin’s participation with these mil bloggers may indicate that the Kremlin will increasingly rely on the wider ultranationalist community to retain support for the war effort,” the ISW wrote.
According to the ISW, Russian reports of Major General Goryachev’s death in the Zaporizhia region show that “certain Russian top military commander officials continue to operate close to the front line and remain vulnerable to accurate Ukrainian strikes.”
