At the end of March, the Ukrainian army announced that it had killed Russian general Yakov Rezantsev near Kherson, the seventh since the war in Ukraine began. The news has not yet received independent but different confirmations observers claim that the number of Russian generals killed in Ukraine is “incredibleAnd with precedents traceable only in the Second World War. This has created numerous problems for Russia and its ability to make effective military decisions, and can be explained by reasons related to the structure of the Russian army (for example, the lack of lower-ranking figures able to lead soldiers closely. ) and the poor security of communications used by the Russians in Ukraine, a much debated topic in recent weeks.
Generals in an army are usually the highest rank in the military hierarchy: in a nutshell, their job is to direct the most extensive formations and divisions of the army. The generals coordinate their actions and guide their strategy, rather than physically participating in the operations. For this reason it is less frequent that they are on the battlefield, where lower-ranking officers such as colonels lead the soldiers, and therefore die in the fighting.
In a war, killing the generals of the enemy army has several advantages. It allows you to momentarily “behead” the opponent and cause a stalemate in his offensive: if the general is killed he must be replaced, and in the meantime the soldiers are left without their most important guide. Oleksiy Arestovych, advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he said al Washington Post that the Ukrainian army has targeted the highest positions of the Russian army with this very goal, managing to gain up to five days of inaction from the enemy army.
Killing the generals also has effects in lowering the morale of the soldiers, and gives greater visibility to their military successes (trivially because it becomes news, and even the press talks about it, acting as a sounding board).
Due to the lack of independent confirmation, it is difficult to know exactly how many Russian generals have been killed – some Western officials they confirmed the seven announced by the Ukrainian army, others say they were killed “at least five“. Russia says it has only lost one.
They might seem small numbers when compared to thousands of soldiers killed, but they are not at all. To get an idea, the United States lost 9 generals over the span of 20 years of the Vietnam War, and only one over the course of both invasions and subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The generals killed in Ukraine are also many for the Russian army: the last time that Russia lost an average of six generals a month, a number comparable to today, was during the Second World War, according to one. studio quoted byEconomist.
The reasons for the killing of all these generals seem to be mainly three.
The poor performance of the Russian military – amid losses, errors on the ground and inability – led Russia to prefer direct involvement of generals on the ground, in an attempt to improve matters by directing soldiers more directly and closely. It is likely that their presence also served to raise the low morale of Russian soldiers, especially the most inexperienced, such as conscripts.
Normally, in many Western armies such tasks would be performed by non-commissioned officers, intermediate figures between soldiers in the field and generals: NATO considers these figures “spinesOf an army. In the Russian army, traditionally and structurally hierarchical, vertical and with many more high-ranking officers compared to many Western armies, figures of this type are much less present. On the field, therefore, in many cases the generals went directly, exposing themselves to greater risks.
Added to this was the lack of secure lines of communication for the Russian military. The analyzes made in recent weeks – including a of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi, the oldest military think tank in the United Kingdom) – showed how Russian soldiers communicated with each other on unencrypted radio frequencies and using mobile phones, therefore very easily intercepted systems. This allowed snipers and Ukrainian soldiers to predict the moves, movements and positions of enemies, including generals, being able to locate and hit them more easily.
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