Two more senior Russian military and intelligence figures have been killed, bringing yet more woe to Vladimir Putin as Ukraine’s armed forces drive deeper into the eastern Donbas region to liberate more occupied territory.
The first, Aleksei Nagin, was a highly respected commander in the infamous PMC Wagner Group – a private army headed by close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin – which has been instrumental in supporting Russia’s invasion.
Nagin, a three-time Order of Courage recipient, was killed on September 20 as Ukrainian troops advanced further into the Donetsk and repelled Russian forces.
Meanwhile in the southern Kherson region, Colonel Aleksei Katerinichev – a career FSB secret service officer and deputy head of Russia’s occupying forces in Kherson – was hit in a ‘pinpoint’ strike by a HIMARS missile today, according to a Russian news agency report.
Katerinichev was a veteran of more than 20 counter-terrorist operations and a key architect of Russian operations in southern Ukraine.
The deaths of such esteemed military personnel just 10 days apart underscores the frailty of Putin’s ‘military operation’, even as the warmongering Russian president today signed agreements formally incorporating the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation.
Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are only partially controlled by Russia, while Putin’s troops in the key city of Lyman in the northern Donetsk have been almost completely surrounded by Ukrainian forces in the latest counter-offensive.
The death of Nagin represents a significant blow for PMC Wagner, who posthumously awarded the veteran combatant their Platinum Star award.
Nagin was a distinguished soldier, having seen combat in Chechnya and Georgia with the Russian army before signing a contract with PMC Wagner as a mercenary and deploying to both Syria and Libya.
He was also posthumously granted the title of Hero of Russia, and was designated the hero of both the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LPR and DPR).
Katerinichev meanwhile held the position of first deputy chairman of the Moscow-installed Kherson civil military administration – effectively making him the second in command of the partially occupied region.