Yuri Baluyevsky, former Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and ex-deputy Defence Minister, broke ranks with Vladimir Putin over failures in the war with Ukraine
Putin’s former top military commander has blasted the Russian ruler’s failures in the Ukraine war.
Former Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky said the dictator’s weakness is putting the country’s future in peril.
Baluyevsky, who is also the ex-deputy Defence Minister, said it was time for Putin to “start fighting for real,” he demanded as he broke ranks with the dictator.
“Russia was the first to develop hypersonic weapons,” Baluyevsky said in a speech to Russia’s public chamber.
“And what did we do? We went around shouting on every corner: ‘We have weapons that no country has — and won’t have any time soon’.”
He mocked Putin: “But that didn’t make our country any safer.”
Retired army general Baluyevsky, 79, served as chief of the Russian general staff from 2004 to 2008. He accused Putin of failing to respond to specific Ukrainian attacks, one on the dictator’s Kremlin apartments in 2023, and the other on the country’s AWACS military planes.
“We talked about red lines in one of our speeches—but how much redder can those lines get? I don’t know what you felt when a Ukrainian drone landed on the dome of the building where the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin] is located.
“I’m not even talking about when these drones were landing on our long-range early warning aircraft. When these drones were striking our facilities, I kept waiting… well, when?”
The rare attack from the veteran commander came as Putin’s war effort showed signs of faltering with Russian frontline advances curbed by Ukraine. The outpouring of criticism also came as Ukraine has begun striking with far greater potency deep inside the Kremlin’s territory.
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