The rest of the implication is that some Russian unit deployed landmines around their position or encampment, and did not mark the minefields. And may not even have had permission to deploy mines at all. A Major General may have been driving a desk for a long time now, but he ought to be bright enough to not go wandering around just “outside the wire” of one of his own encampments. That is definitely not friendly territory if there’s any competence in that unit at all.
Another possibility is that he found an old mine emplaced by Ukrainians at a time that territory was Ukrainian and they were being pushed back. He just happened to stomp in exactly the unhappy spot.
Another interesting possibility is that this was a planned fragging, either by landmine or by grenade or other booby trap. Somebody knew where the mine(s) or trap were, misdirected the good General as to where was safe and watched as a good deed was done. And now the cover-up is afoot.
I sure can’t handicap the odds on these possibilities. But they’re all at least plausible scenarios.
One thing that I noticed in that Wikipedia article is that in the Russian forces, Major General is the lowest ranked general, a One-star. That’s worth keeping in mind when seeing so many “Major Generals” killed - they aren’t particularly high ranking generals.
For comparison, the US Army has 231 generals between 1- and 4-star rank. The DoD as a whole has roughly 660 folks of those ranks. To oversee about 1.4M active duty troops.
The Russian military (all branches) comes to about 1.1M active duty people. Hard to say whether the US or Russian forces are more top-heavy, but if for simplicity we assume parity in top-heaviness and a similar headcount breakdown between the services, that suggests the Russian Army ought to have about 200 generals total of every kind.
Losing a dozen-plus of the 200 is surprising, and good news from the West’s POV, but is probably not crippling to the Russian army unless they were the best and brightest dozen of the lot.
This piqued my curiosity, went to WIkipedia to see if they had a page with WWII information, and of course they did. Discounting Admirals and Marine/Army Air Force Generals and just concentrating on the US Army, there were 2 Lt. Generals, 5 Major Generals, and 9 Brigadier Generals killed during WWII, 10 by hostile fire, 4 by accidents, 1 friendly fire, and one died in a POW camp. And this was over a 4-5 year period while commanding a much larger force than is now deployed in Ukraine.
I’m surprised Ukraine would bring these objects home during the war. Drone attacks are already escalating as Russia tries to knock out the power grid. A safety deposit box in a Swiss bank would be more secure than a building in Ukraine. Unfortunately the collection is too big.
Thankfully these objects left Crimea prior to Russia’s invasion.
(This should be a link to the free version of the story from The Wall Street Journal.)
Excerpts:
One volunteer was promised 100,000 rubles (about $1,000) to join; he did so because his factory job paid 30,000 rubles a month. He joined in October; his family hasn’t seen the money yet. He thought he would be in a rear position, but he was sent to Avdiivka almost immediately.
Another was drafted in 2002, and spent most of his service in rear areas before being moved to Avdiivka this fall. His tactical training consisted of charging across open fields while shouting.
A third volunteered because many of his relatives had served in the military in the past. He thought he’d be a reserve, because of a heart condition, but he was sent to the front.
All three talk about the lack of training and the predominant Russian tactic to take Avdiivka, which is essentially just sending waves of men against the Ukrainian lines.
OTOH, all of war is barbaric. We’d do well to outgrow this adolescent phase of humanity’s existence before we end ourselves. I’d like to hope we could at least get greedy enough to recognize that war in general, and mining in specific, is very economically inefficient.
If we won’t be nice to each other for genuinely good and humane reasons, at least maybe we could be nice to each other so as to make more money off each other. Maaaybe? Someday? Bueller?
Theoretically, losing just ONE Napolean could be catastrophic. However, the Russian army seems to be experiencing a severe shortage of Napoleans at present.
Putin just won’t quit and call it a day. Russia has a bigger population than Ukraine. It’s a advantage when the leader is willing to sacrifice his badly trained troops.
