Russia’s president has restructured his elite forces amid growing fears over the loyalty of the country’s top brass.
Vladimir Putin personally ordered moving the Interior Ministry’s Grom special forces unit under the command of the National Guard, according to reports on Saturday.
Grom, made up of about 7,000 men, is widely renowned for its hardline operations against gangland activity.
The National Guard, headed up by Mr Putin’s former bodyguard, Viktor Zolotov, is roughly 320,000 men strong and answers directly to the Russian president.
Its former activities have largely centred on quashing anti-governmental protests.
Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics at UCL, told The Telegraph the move represented an attempt to ‘coup-proof the Kremlin.’
It’s exactly one month to the day after Yevgeny Prigozhin and members of his Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, marched almost to Moscow in a rebellion against what it described as military failings in Ukraine.
Denouncing Prigozhin’s actions as ‘treasonous’, Mr Putin has since shown signs of concern over further signs of disquiet among senior members of the country’s military and security services.
In addition to the recent restructuring, the Russian president has also launched what appears to be an ongoing purge of defence officials, with up to 11 high-profile cannings in recent weeks.
Last Monday, it emerged Major General Vladimir Seliverstov, a Russian paratrooper commander, had been removed from his post as head of the country’s 106th Guards Airborne division.
According to Washing DC-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, other fired generals include Major General Ivan Popov, who offered a scathing criticism of the country’s military leadership in a farewell speech to his troops.
Meanwhile, General Sergey Surovikin, a top military commander with links to the Wagner organisation, has not been seen since the rebellion took place.
US intelligence officials have reportedly claimed that Mr Surovikin likely had advance knowledge of Mr Prigozhin’s plans to stage his so-called ‘coup’ last month.
