Kremlin Favored Russian General Awarded Medal for Fake City Capture Dies in Action

Russian Major General Anton Feliksovich Grunis, a senior officer actively profiled in Kremlin media as a brilliant tactician and battle winner in Ukraine, has died in a reported drone strike, Ukrainian official military and independent news sources reported on Tuesday. Grunis, 46, was a native of the central Russian region of Tatarstan. His combat service included the 2nd Chechen War, the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Russia’s invasion and takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014, Russian military operations in Syria in 2015, and Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine begun in 2022.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Early reports of Grunis’ death surfaced in an encrypted Russian officer social channel called Surovovskoe Bratstvo on the messaging app Telegram. A death notice identified him as a graduate of the elite Kazan Suvorov Military Academy class of 1996, and comment by fellow students implied he died in combat. Ukrainian information platforms led by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) General Staff rebroadcast the death notice and confirmed it. The Independent reports and official Ukrainian sources did not state when or how Grunis died. Official Russian information platforms by Wednesday had not mentioned Grunis’ alleged death at all. Drone footage published by Ukrainian army sources on Wednesday identified 427th Unmanned Systems Forces Brigade “Rarog” as responsible for killing Grunis in strikes near the village Kindrativka, Donetsk region, on Sept. 12. Imagery showed kamikaze drones boring in and detonating inside buildings geo-located to that place and substantial fires, however, that content showed no conclusive evidence Grunis or any other Russian service member had been hit. Other Topics of Interest ‘Weeks’ Without Power: Partisans Claim Sabotage Hit Russian Missile Components Plant The partisan group says the disruption delayed production of components for Kh-101, Iskander-K, and Pantsir-S1 systems for weeks. Promotional footage released by Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Aug. 28 showed a live Grunis being awarded Russia’s highest medal for bravery “Hero of the Russian Federation” for success in battle, and stating to interviewers that he was honored and confident in Russian victory in Ukraine.Grunis’ reported demise follows a rash of deaths in the Russian army’s upper ranks, including Lt. Gen. Damir Davydov’s assassination in a June 9 car bombing, Maj. Gen. Valery Plokhotnyuk’s death in an Aug. 1 Moscow restaurant bombing, and the killing of Lt. Gen. Sergey Milchakov , commander of Russia’s 51st Combined Arms Army, in a Ukrainian six-missile precision strike hitting his command post in the Donetsk sector on Aug. 26.More senior officers, including generals, may have lost their lives in the restaurant bombing and the headquarters attack, because dozens had gathered at both places, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesmen said.Grunis had been a high-profile officer in Russia thanks to his appearances in state-run media profiling him as a tough, frontline fighter with the call sign “The Terrible” (Russian : Грозный), and the man responsible for the capture of the major Ukrainian fortress city Kostiantynivka, in the east of the country.Grunis’ command, the 4th Motor Rifle, in parallel content produced by Russia’s Defense Ministry and aired nationally, depicted the unit as an elite formation made up of Russia’s best soldiers, whose attacks with Grunis at the helm were unstoppable.Grunis, in the June interview, praised his troops’ alleged skill in overcoming Ukrainian defenses with a hidden flanking movement through forests and swamps. The Ukrainian unit attacked by the Russians, the 156th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, was broken by infiltrating Russian foot soldiers supported by massed artillery and drone strikes that allowed a daring river crossing inside the city, Grunis claimed.“All our units very quickly and successfully started operating on the left bank side of the city and exploited the success. As it worked out, we cut the city into pieces like a pie,” Grunis said. “Our great advantage was the Russian soldier. It is the dream of any commander, because no other army in the world has such soldiers as we do.” Russian state television on July 3 aired video of Russian President Vladimir Putin receiving a formal report from his top general, Valery Gerasimov, that Kostiantynivka had fallen fully under the control of Russian forces thanks to Grunis’ 4th Brigade’s victory. Lower-ranking generals stood in the background were described in official media as a “command center near the front lines.”In fact, based on all other sources including official Ukrainian army statements, independent Ukrainian media, OSINT research groups, Western think tanks including the US-based Institute for the Study of War and six Ukrainian combat unit internal chat groups monitored by Kyiv Post and known to be deployed in the Kostiantynivka sector, Russian forces never came close to capturing the city and three months later it remains roughly under Ukrainian control.The closest Russian forces came to pushing Ukrainian troops out of the city, per those sources, was with massed infiltration attacks in early July that sometimes isolated Ukrainian outposts in the center of the city for days before strike drones and assault infantry teams were able to locate the infiltrators and destroy them.Russian forces currently hold the southern districts of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian forces’ fortifications in the north, and the center of the city is mostly a no-man’s-land out of the control of either side, those sources say. Reporting over the past week pointed to continuing Russian attempts to infiltrate foot soldiers into Konstantynivka’s Druzhivka suburb, with Ukrainian drone units operating in the vicinity claiming good results in attacking them.Ukraine’s General Staff in a Wednesday situation update reported continuing Russian attacks in the Kostiantynivka sector with all assaults repelled. Unit information feeds for formations in that sector reported Ukrainian defenses within the city holding.Ukrainian volunteer groups tracking Russian combat units and their members have, contrasting sharply with Kremlin messaging, long identified Grunis’ 4th Brigade as a troubled unit with soldiers complaining of officers’ extorting money in exchange for not being ordered on assault missions and soldiers’ unwilling to pay bribes or accept orders to make an assault, being locked in open-air pits until they change their mind. In a video, a man identifying himself as Sergei Moshchenko, a 4th Brigade rifleman, said that unit commanders ordered him and his mates to attack across open ground covered by Ukrainian drone swarms in an effective suicide mission, and that he and his buddies were new recruits with less than two weeks of training. During comments on Aug. 28, following the “Hero of the Russian Federation” awards ceremony, Grunis said he was “honored” to command “the best soldiers in the world.”