Russia has fired the commander of its Eastern Military District, the latest in a long series of military leadership changes that have occurred as the war in Ukraine has stalled.
Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko was removed from his position, the Russian news site Tass reported on Friday, and he was replaced with Lt. Gen. Rustam Muradov.
Muradov previously served in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and commanded Russian peacekeepers in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, Reuters reported. He was sanctioned by the European Union in February.
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The head of Dagestan Sergey Melikov said on Telegram that Muradov “has always been a leader who motivated others, a strategist who was making right decisions, a courageous fighter who was leading the attack. I am confident that these qualities in addition to his military education and combat experience obtained in the most restive regions, Chechnya and Syria, will help him brilliantly deal with combat tasks. I am proud of my friendship with this courageous person.”
Chaiko’s firing comes days after RBC, another Russian state media outlet, reported that the commander of the Western military district, Col. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlyov, had been replaced as well. While their removals come as the tension surrounding the war has increased, they are far from the first Russian military leaders to be replaced for the way the war has played out.
Zhuravlyov was replaced after Russian forces retreated from the strategic city of Lyman within the past couple weeks, though they have continued to lose territory in the Kherson region — one of the four that Russia claims to have annexed to the Russian Federation.
The discontent among Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s allies is also growing.
An unnamed member of Putin’s inner circle expressed concerns over the mismanagement of the war effort and mistakes made by military leaders carrying out the war, according to the Washington Post. Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the administration that Russian officials established in the part of Kherson that Moscow controls, urged Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to commit suicide following the successful Ukrainian offensive.
Russia’s losses, both in terms of manpower and former occupied Ukrainian territory, have raised the concern that Putin could resort to more extreme measures in order to win the war. In part, last month, it conducted sham referendums in Ukrainian territory it occupied that supposedly showed an overwhelming majority of residents want to join the Russian Federation, while he also called up roughly 300,000 conscripts to bolster troop levels.
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The call-up last month spurred an exodus of draft-eligible men fleeing to the border while some protests took place.
In addition to the annexation and the call-ups, Putin has continued to threaten to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, while President Joe Biden warned on Thursday about the possibility of a nuclear “Armageddon.”
Despite Biden’s stark remarks, the White House has maintained as recently as Friday that it has not seen any reason to change its nuclear posture.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have [any] indication that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
