Putin’s General Problem
That’s an awful lot of generals getting killed in Ukraine there, Vlad
How are the Russians losing so many generals so quickly? As I understood it, generals get to enjoy the only upside of being in the military, which is not having to do the things that get you killed. That’s nine of the poor old boys now, very nearly ten yesterday, when Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces no less, narrowly avoided cashing in a one-way ticket to the family mausoleum back home, after an enemy missile strike came a bit too close for comfort.* Gerasimov is also the Deputy Defence Minister; the Russians are running so low on generals, they’re now drafting in politicians to try and remember what buttons they used to push before they retired.
In the entirety of the Second World War, Britain lost 16 generals in total, eight of which were non-combatant deaths, such as car or plane crashes. So basically eight killed in action over the course of a six-year global armageddon that claimed the lives of up to 80 million people. Russia has already lost more than that in the last five weeks of a complacent and clearly botched invasion. At this rate of attrition, a few more weeks of this, and Putin will be handing out battlefield promotions to the one guy left standing who remembered to turn his Grindr GPS off.
