The wars inside the war

Putting together the puzzle: the popular yet dismissed brigade commander, Bezuhla, the Kursk operation, Syrsky's cunning 'Operation Rehabilitation'. Commanders vs generals, generals vs Zelensky.

I won’t bore you with speculations about which parts of the Kursk region are under control of the AFU. There are plenty of places you can find that.

There are much more interesting political processes taking place ‘beneath’, so to speak’, the Kursk operation. Besides the obvious PR advantages, the Kursk offensive is profoundly linked to two ongoing conflicts - that between Zelensky’s ruling clique and the top army generals, and that between lower-level officers and the generals. They are at once parallel and intersecting. Today I’ll try untangle them.

The Ishkulov mystery

To begin with, the conflict between the lower level officers and the generals. The former are often known as ‘combrigs’ - brigade commanders. This conflict was most spectacularly - and successfully for the combrigs - manifested by the Azov vs Sodol drama, which I wrote about here. I wrote about other recent manifestations of the conflict here.

But as I predicted then, not all combrigs have the political clout Azov does to defy impossible, suicidal commands.

And this was illustrated by the saga of the 80th battalion, which until recently was fighting on the hottest parts of the Donbass front. It is often described by Ukrainian commentators as being among the most militarily capable units at the frontline. And its troops ascribe this to good leadership - a common refrain of the ‘young nationalist officers’ against the ‘old soviet generals’ is that ‘all (or almost all) we need to win the war is better commanders on the ground’.

But this was not to be. On July 29, the fighters of the 80th released a video statement calling on President Zelensky not to fire their beloved commander, Emil’ Ishkulov:

Why are commanders who hold unquestionable authority not favored by the higher leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine? Because they are not afraid to raise problematic issues and report on the actual state of affairs. They don't recklessly sacrifice people in pursuit of medals.

This cry for help was supported by a range of people associated with the ‘anti-general’ movement. This included top Azov political and military figure, Rodion Kudriashov. The Poroshenko-affiliaited military journalist Yuriy Butusov, who has 1 million youtube subscribers and also extensively covered the Sodol saga, also supported Ishkulov.

The nationalist telegram sensations Lachen and Sternenko, with over 1.5 million subscribers, also supported Ishkulov . Note that Lachen and Sternenko are generally considered to be fairly close with the president’s office (as well as western structures) - more later on the complicated relationship between the office and the generals.

But regardless of all this, commander’ Ishkulov was removed from his post by August 1, as confirmed by an official post by the army on the topic. The post claimed that he was in fact being promoted, though he would soon after deny that.

According to Ukraine’s most influential military telegram, ‘Deep State’ on August 1, there were serious reasons why Ishkulov was removed:

🦅 Former commander of the 80th Brigade, Emil Ishkulov, gave a comment to the publication "Glavkom," where he explained the reason for his removal.

💬 Specifically, he confirmed the unofficial version of his dismissal, which involved his removal due to his refusal to carry out a task that was obviously impossible. The situation was brought to light by the brigade's battalion commanders, who called for their commander not to be removed from his position.

“The unit commanders of the brigade are dissatisfied with the higher leadership's decision to remove me. They are partly aware of the situation and the unrealistic nature of the task assigned to them. Consequently, I was told by the Air Assault Forces leadership: "You probably need to take a break."“

💬 According to him, the unrealistic tasks were given to him by "higher authorities," and the task remains before the brigade to this day.

🚫 The Air Assault Forces Command also essentially lied because, in their response to the situation, they stated that the brigade commander was being promoted. However, Emil Ishkulov noted the complete opposite:

“Well, what kind of promotion?.. Now, my deputy has taken the position of brigade commander, while I am moving to his position — deputy chief of intelligence.”

But what were these ‘unrealistic tasks’ assigned to Ishkulov, and which ‘higher authorities’?

Syrsky’s cunning plan?

I’ve written about Maryana Bezuhla here several times. Suffice to say, she is a parliamentarian with a medical background (in particular, a medical internship at the US state department) who positions herself as a vicious critique of military corruption and strategic failures among the top military brass. She is considered by all liberal-nationalist opposition forces to be a tool of Zelensky (though she tries hard to act otherwise) to offset popular discontent onto the military, and make it seem as if he is working hard to fix the situation at the frontline.

Before Zaluzhny was sacked at head of the army at the start of 2024, Bezuhla was working at full steam to discredit him daily. And only recently, she was doing the same to the current head of the military, Oleksandr Syrsky. On July 14, she even accused Syrsky and his entourage of secretly preparing for peace. Her current facebook cover is even an edit of Syrsky triumphantly holding a shovel, a reference to the shocking incapacity of the Ukrainian army to build defensive lines:

But then, she mysteriously stopped with a final anti-Syrsky post on August 3…

And a day after the Kursk operation began, she started praising Syrsky for his role in it - quite an unexpected turn!

She posted another half-hearted anti-Syrsky meme on the 9th, but the real meat came soon after. On August 14, she took a break from the social media restraint she had been demonstrating since early August to post a huge text about Kursk, Syrsky - and Ishkulov.

It was titled ‘Operation "Rehabilitation" or the Cunning Plan of the Ukrainian Zhukov’ - because Bezuhla, like her colleagues, is biologically incapable of making any criticism without implying that it is the fault of the ephemeral ‘Soviet Mentality’. I’d recall that Zhukov was quite militarily successful, but who am I to doubt Dr Bezuhla’s military prowess…

Anyway, according to Bezuhla, Zaluzhny was always against operations to enter Russia, because:

he favored linear operations and, lacking combat experience, preferred traditional frontal assaults, which were implemented with mixed success in 2022 in the Kherson region and completely failed in 2023 in the Zaporizhzhia region

She even praises Syrsky:

Syrskyi, on the other hand, insisted on finding unprotected areas and rapid attacks, which he proposed for the liberation of the Kharkiv region in 2022. There was even talk of going further to secure the border. However, at that time, the focus was on advancing in Kherson, and Zaluzhnyi was against diverting resources elsewhere. Nevertheless, at the Stavka, Syrskyi managed to secure the President's intervention, and the Kharkiv counteroffensive took place. They did not advance further.

According to Bezuhla, Syrsky ‘with political support, began planning something more serious’ as soon as he was appointed to replace Zaluzhny in June 2024.

She doesn’t forget to chastise Syrsky as well, of course:

the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine became obsessed with the idea of showing himself again in active operations. In the process of preparation and due to this autocratic management style, other matters were somewhat "forgotten." Avdiivka, after which the Russians advanced 30 km through unprepared positions, Kharkiv region, Toretsk rotation, and scandals with Sodol, the unprepared Pokrovsko-Myronivka agglomeration, and much more were not addressed in the midst of our, I admit, only commander-in-chief's active plans.

Naturally, she follows up by clarifying that this is all caused by Syrsky’s influence by the ‘Soviet classical school’, with its ‘attitude towards human life’.

Nevertheless, she praises Syrsky’s appropriate choice for attack, use of elite instead of mobilized units, and the informational silence around the operation, which she contrasts favorably to Zaluzhny’s failed 2023 counter-offensive.

But after a complicated theory of how Syrsky is trying to steal responsibility for the Kursk ‘success’ from airborne units, Bezuhla gets to the most interesting part:

But that's not all. The idea looked like a "task 200" one-way mission [EIU: ‘200’ means military fatality in Russia and Ukraine]. Unable to withstand such treatment, one of the most authoritative paratrooper commanders, the commander of the 80th brigade, Emil Ishkulov, openly told the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine about the unrealistic nature of the task. This was non-public. But Syrskyi's reaction — to dismiss the brigade commander without any explanations, appoint a more obedient one, and not consider the risks — outraged the entire brigade and gained public resonance. Moreover, Ishkulov did not give in and in a comment spoke the truth about the situation, mentioning both the political pressure regarding the operation and the position of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Without details about the plan, of course. The brigade commander was not reinstated, but something else happened: the plan was improved, and this can be considered a positive outcome that saved more than one life.

So, as it turns out, Ishkulov was removed by Syrsky, and because of his doubts regarding Kursk. This itself was also confirmed yesterday by the Guardian

Back to Bezuhla’s megapost about Kursk. In it, she is also quite blunt about the risks of the operation: