The Ukrainian defense ministry announced that they ‘liquidated’ a Russian general, Vitaly Gerassimov, and “killed or wounded” several other senior Russian Army officers outside of Kharkiv in recent days.
Gerasimov was the chief of staff of the 41st Army. Another 41st Army general, Andrei Sukhovetsky, was killed in Ukraine last week.
The Ukrainian defense ministry also announced that they had intercepted Russian communications. Business Insider, citing Christo Grozev, the executive director of the open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat, reports:
… the Ukrainian defense ministry released audio of an intercepted phone call between what it said were two Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers discussing the death and criticizing Russia’s secure military communication platform.
Ukrainian intelligence was able to intercept the call because the FSB officer used a phone with a generic SIM card because their secure telecommunications system wasn’t working, Grozev said.
“Can you get on a secure channel?” one of the officers is heard asking, to which the other replied: “The secure doesn’t work here, we can’t get anyone.”
Insider adds:
Gerasimov, who was awarded medals for service in Syria, Crimea, and Chechnya, had personally met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on February 27 to discuss the Ukraine offensive, the state-run TASS news agency reported at the time.
The Guardian reports:
The loss of top ranking officers has come at a time when much of Putin’s invasion force has become bogged down by logistical problems, poor morale and Ukrainian resistance. The failure of its encrypted communications system could be another severe blow.
“In the call, you hear the Ukraine-based FSB officer ask his boss if he can talk via the secure Era system. The boss says Era is not working,” Grozev said on Twitter. “Era is a super expensive cryptophone system that [Russia’s defence ministry] introduced in 2021 with great fanfare. It guaranteed [to] work ‘in all conditions’.”
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the war was “like a nightmare” for Russia and hailed the Ukrainian resistance effort.