Russian officers falling like flies in Ukraine

Valeri Gerasimov: Russian officers falling like flies

Russian officers are falling at a rate that no military doctrine considers sustainable. The latest casualty attributed to Ukrainian forces is Brigadier General Valeri Gerasimov, directly commanding between 3,000 and 5,000 men. If confirmed, he would be the second Russian general killed after Andrei Sukhovetsky. The number weighs more than the name: in just two weeks of invasion, circulating estimates already put a hundred commanders out of action. And all this in an army that, on paper, commands its officers from the rear.

Why Valeri Gerasimov is not the Russian Chief of General Staff

Here it is worth applying the brakes before running. The fallen brigadier general is not the head of the Russian Defense General Staff, the one who signed that famous text on hybrid warfare. They are two different people with the same surname, and the confusion has poisoned much of the reaction. Some even suggest a possible family relationship —nephew, according to some versions—, a detail that would greatly complicate the Kremlin's information management if it were confirmed.

The doubt about identity is not minor. A shared analysis points out that, with that first and last name, there are at least two military men from the same province, Kazan, where the surname is very common, and both born in 1977. One of them reached general at 38 years and eleven months; the image that has been circulated of him would correspond to when he was still a colonel, between 2012 and 2014. That is: the photo in circulation may not be of the man to whom the death is attributed.

From colonels upward, all to the front

The trickle is not limited to general's stars. Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky, commanding the 247th Air Assault Regiment, adds to the list of senior officers officially acknowledged by the Russian army. Also a Chechen colonel, killed in Volnovakha. And the most striking case: Vladimir Zhoga, commander of the Sparta battalion, who died at less than thirty years old —born in May 1993— and was buried with military honors and Russia's highest decoration.

There falls the most common argument, that an officer never puts himself within enemy reach. In units from self-proclaimed territories, having a thirty-something colonel on the front line is not an exception but a method. His father, Artyom Zhoga, who joined him in the militia in 2014, now takes command of the battalion.

Why does a Russian general expose himself to enemy fire?

Because in Soviet military tradition, commanders lead battles near the front, or from the front itself. That is the most repeated explanation. The Spanish one, by contrast, sends officers to tell war stories from the canteen, as more than one jokes. And there is an added factor pushing commanders forward: communication problems.

The encrypted system used by Russian forces —known as Era— needs 4G antennas to work. Bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure would have left it useless, so many officers are forced to move to the front line to give orders in person. The result is an exposed command, on a front where artillery does not distinguish ranks.

The attrition calculation: a hundred commanders and a thousand officers

The figures being handled are harsh. Starting from 10,000 Russian casualties in almost two weeks of war, the circulating estimate speaks of at least a hundred commanders fallen, a figure that approaches a thousand if captains and lieutenants are added. The reasoning is simple: each commander who falls drags his staff with him. Some maintain that, with the loss of a brigade commander, his column will also have been annihilated.

Losing a brigadier general is not losing one man. It is losing an entire decision-making structure, with years of training behind it. An uncomfortable question remains floating: whether Russia can replace that human capital at the rate it is spending it, or whether the attrition in the command will end up weighing more than that of the troops.

Is Gerasimov's death a hoax?

Not everyone believes these casualties. Some maintain that a senior officer never puts himself within reach of enemy weapons, and some respond that in this conflict the rules have been broken on both sides. One of the hypotheses circulating points to Ukrainian special forces operations sent expressly after specific commanders, the wet affairs school. The other, more cynical, suspects it is all a campaign to demoralize senior officers.

Disinformation plays in both directions. A known source even published that Gerasimov's death was directly false, without providing more. When neither the identity nor the fact is confirmed, the reader is left with the only solid thing: a pattern of casualties in the military leadership that can no longer be attributed to chance alone.

What to expect

The foreseeable thing, if the trickle of casualties among commanders continues, is that the Russian army will end up pulling its officers back from the front line, even if that slows its operations on the ground even more. But foreseeable does not miccionan probable. The rigidity of Soviet doctrine weighs more than is publicly acknowledged, and communication problems are not solved by decree. The underlying doubt remains, the one no one closes: every time a new name appears, it is impossible to know if it is a real casualty, pure propaganda or —most uncomfortable— both at once.