Surovikin is one of the more respected senior officers within the Russian military and any official sanction against him is likely to be divisive, the British Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update on the Ukraine war.

"General Sergei Surovikin, Commander-in-Chief Russian Aerospace Forces and deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, has not been seen in public since the 23-24 June 2023 Wagner Group mutiny. Reports of Surovikin’s arrest cannot be confirmed, but authorities will likely be suspicious of his long association with Wagner dating back to his service in Syria from 2017,” reads the statement.

According to the British MoD, the suspicion that has potentially fallen on senior serving officers highlights how Prigozhin’s abortive insurrection has worsened existing fault lines within Russia’s national security community.

Meanwhile, Deputy Defence Minister Colonel General Yunus-bek Yevkurov was notably absent from a televised appearance by the Ministry of Defence’s leadership on 03 July 2023, the intelligence update said.





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