Putin meets Russian generals in charge of war effort

Lidia Kelly and Dan Peleschuk | August 19, 2023

President Vladimir Putin has visited the commander of Russia’s operation in Ukraine and other top military brass, a meeting that came after Ukraine claimed counteroffensive gains on the southeastern front.

“Vladimir Putin held a meeting at the headquarters of the special military operation group in Rostov-on-Don,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia, which launched its invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, calls its actions a special military operation.

The Kremlin added that Putin, Russia’s supreme commander-in-chief, listened to reports from Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Army in charge of Moscow’s operations in Ukraine, and other top military commanders and officers.

Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday Russia had launched drone attacks against parts of northern, central and western Ukraine, damaging civilian infrastructure in at least two regions.

Kyiv’s air force said the military shot down 15 of the 17 Iranian-made Shahed drones that had been launched, part of Moscow’s campaign of regular air strikes against Ukraine.

The deputy governor of the western Khmelnytskyi region said two people were wounded and dozens of buildings damaged by a blast wave.

Officials in the central Zhytomyr region were still assessing damages there after Russian forces targeted an unspecified infrastructure facility, Governor Vitaliy Bunechko reported.

There were no other immediate reports of casualties or damages.

Russia has attacked Ukrainian settlements far from the battlefield with drones and missiles as part of its full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022. 

Putin’s meeting came after Ukraine, whose counteroffensive to recapture land taken by Russia in the first months of the war has been slower than expected, said it liberated a small village along the frontline, its first since July.

The Kremlin did not provide any additional details of the meeting but videos published by the RIA state news agency showed Gerasimov greeting Putin in what appeared to be night-time and leading him into a building after a brief handshake. 

Gerasimov, who has been seen rarely in public in recent months, had been the target of savage criticism from Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and some Russian military bloggers over Russia’s failings in the war.

Rostov-on-Don, a city some 100 kilometres from Ukraine’s border, is home to the Russian southern military district command whose army is fighting in Ukraine.