Russian General Gennady Zhidko, who was ousted after briefly commanding the Kremlin’s troops in Ukraine, died in Moscow on Wednesday aged 57 after a “long illness,” a regional leader announced Wednesday.
Zhidko led Russian troops invading Ukraine from May 2022 until he was pushed out last summer for “for failures during military operations,” the BBC reported at the time.
The commander was eventually replaced by Sergey Surovikin, also known as “General Armageddon.” Surovikin — allegedly an ally of Wagner chief and mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin — was later also removed from military leadership and is now under house arrest.
The EU, the U.S. and the U.K. had sanctioned Zhidko for his role in the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where he deployed troops — including minors — to wage Russia’s war of aggression.
Zhidko is the second Russian general to die this week. On Tuesday, Gennady Lopyrev died in jail of an unspecified illness, a prison monitoring official said, as reported by Radio Free Europe. He was arrested in 2016 while serving in President Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.
