Vladimir Putin has moved to shake up Russia’s security services in the wake of the Wagner group’s failed insurrection, rewarding loyalists with promotions and freezing out figures sympathetic to the paramilitary organisation’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Sergei Surovikin, a senior Russian general known to have a good relationship with Prigozhin, has not been seen since recording a hostage-style video in the early hours of Saturday morning as the mutiny began, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The unexplained absence of one of the most prominent commanders in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine comes as Putin seeks to restore order and re-establish control over the security services after the first coup attempt in Russia in three decades, said the people.