As Russian troops wage a ferocious house-to-house fight for control of strongholds in eastern Ukraine, a parallel battle is unfolding in the top echelons of military power in Moscow, with President Vladimir Putin reshuffling his top generals while rival camps try to win his favour.
The fighting for the salt mining town of Soledar and the nearby city of Bakhmut has highlighted a bitter rift between the Russian Defence Ministry leadership and Yevgeny Prigozhin, a rogue millionaire whose private military force known as the Wagner Group has played an increasingly visible role in Ukraine.
Putin's shakeup of the military brass this week was seen as a bid to show that the Defence Ministry still has his support and is in charge as the troubled conflict nears the 11-month mark.
Prigozhin rushed Wednesday to declare that his mercenary force had captured Soledar, arguing that the prize was won exclusively by Wagner.
The Defence Ministry has challenged that characterisation — describing action by airborne troops and other forces in the battle — and on Friday claimed credit for taking the town. A Ukrainian army spokesman denied that, saying fighting in Soledar continued.
The 61-year-old Prigozhin, who was known as “Putin's chef” for his lucrative catering contracts and was indicted in the U.S. For meddling in the 2016 presidential election, has expanded his assets to include Wagner, as well as mining and other spheres. He has scathingly criticised the military brass for blunders in Ukraine, saying Wagner was more efficient than regular troops.
He has found a powerful ally in Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has deployed elite troops from his southern Russian region to fight in Ukraine and also assailed the military leadership and the Kremlin for being too soft and indecisive.
While both have pledged loyalty to Putin, their public attacks on his top generals openly challenged the Kremlin's monopoly on such criticism, something that Russia's tightly controlled political system hadn't seen before. In the reshuffle announced Wednesday, the Defense Ministry said the head of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, was named the new chief of Russian forces in Ukraine, while the former top commander there, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, was demoted to Gerasimov's deputy after only three months on the job.