Vladimir Putin Loses Top General, Marking Latest Blow To Russian Leader As His Forces Struggle To Take Ukraine
Feb. 7 2023, Published 4:30 p.m. ET
Vladimir Putin lost yet another top general in the latest blow to strike the Russian leader as his forces continue in their desperate struggle to take Ukraine, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Major-General Dmitry Ulyanov, 44, was reportedly killed in a firefight with a Ukrainian sabotage group earlier this week.
According to Daily Mail, Ulyanov’s death came shortly after the major general unretired from the Russian military to fight on the frontlines of Ukraine.
Although Ulyanov previously served as a top paratrooper and commander of Russia’s elite 98th Guards Airborne Division, he was ordered to command a brigade of mobilized motorized infantrymen out of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan when Putin’s forces first invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
His death marks the tenth confirmed top general to die in Ukraine as Putin’s “special military operation” quickly approaches the one-year mark.
“Like his father did not sit in the rear, he went to the front line,” a close friend to the fallen Russian commander wrote shortly after Ulyanov’s death earlier this week. “Glory to the Hero! Glory to the Airborne Forces!”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported in December, Ulyanov’s death in Ukraine came just weeks after another top Putin ally was killed in a fiery car bomb explosion.
Andrii Shtepa, whom Putin put in place to govern the Ukrainian village of Liubymivka after invading the nation last year, was confirmed dead on Thursday, December 22 after his vehicle erupted into a fatal inferno.
The Liubymivka governor was reportedly appointed to govern the Ukrainian village in the summer of 2022 and was accused of launching a devastating reign of terror in the time between taking over the village in July and being killed in December.
"It looked like in the movies about the atrocities of the Nazis during the Second World War,” one witness who survived Shtepa’s reign of terror said at the time. “The Russian occupiers kicked in the doors, cursed, severely beat our men, turned everything in the houses upside down.”
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"In general, a lot of people were affected – they visited many houses,” the survivor continued. “Many things disappeared after them. Also, the occupiers looked at all the phones and, as it seemed to us, copied their contents.”
Other top Russian commanders killed in Ukraine over the past 12 months include Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev and Major Generals Andrei Kolesnikov, Andrey Sukhovetsky, Vitaly Gerasimov, Vladimir Frolov, Andrei Simonov, Oleg Mityaev, Kanamat Botashev, and Roman Kutuzov.
Although at least ten of Putin’s top commanders have been confirmed dead, Ukraine’s intelligence services indicate several other high-ranking Russian officers have also been killed but not confirmed by Putin or the Kremlin.