Putin “was betrayed by his own disgruntled officers who passed intelligence to kyiv” over Storm Shadow attack that “killed 34 people”
- At least three missiles hit the headquarters in a major attack on Friday.
Russian naval officers are alleged to have leaked top-secret details to Ukraine, leading to a devastating missile attack on Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters.
The dictator’s regime had not paid its officers and they retaliated by handing over sensitive information to a partisan resistance group that worked closely with kyiv.
The attack killed Admiral Viktor Sokolov, 61, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and a total of 34 officers, and wounded 105, according to Ukraine’s special operations force.
It came as Sokolov met with other commanders for a war planning session.
‘Delays in [salary] “Payments alone do not force the armed forces of the Russian Federation to go against the Russian authorities,” a spokesperson for the anti-Putin partisan group ATESH told the Kyiv Post.
The reported breakthrough came as Kiev said senior Russian navy commanders had been among dozens killed or wounded in a missile attack on Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea.
Kiev has formally claimed that Admiral Viktor Sokolov, 61, hand-picked by Putin to restore fleet pride after the embarrassing loss of the flagship Moskva to Ukrainian Neptune missiles in April 2022, is among the dead.
The Russian naval officers who leaked intelligence to them believed that Putin was “fighting a criminal war and that it must be stopped.”
The group reportedly paid its sources.
“The financial reward only helps them decide to cooperate with the ATESH movement, it serves as an additional incentive,” the spokesperson said.
The Crimean partisan group declined to say how much the leakers were paid, but “it was enough to cover the risks to the officers and their families,” the Kyiv Post reported.
ATESH said the intelligence was immediately passed to the Ukrainian security service SBU and military intelligence HUR.
Among those injured in the Storm Shadow missile attack were Russian war commanders Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk, chief of the General Staff, and Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov, it was reported.
It is claimed that the group’s intelligence was also key to the destruction of the large Minsk landing ship and the damage to the Rostov-on-Don submarine earlier this month.
Sevastopol before (top) and after (bottom) a missile attack that hit Moscow’s Black Sea fleet headquarters on Friday in a suspected Ukrainian attack deep in Russian-controlled territory.
Ukraine now claims that Russia suffered 62 “irreversible losses” when Minsk was hit.
“The Russian military is well aware of the existence of the partisan movement and uses all its forces and means to suppress it and identify our agents,” the ATESH spokesperson said.
‘The growing resistance among Crimeans confuses [the Russians] a lot.’
ATESH hopes to carry out more subversive acts against the Russian occupation forces.
“We have ears and eyes both inside and outside, so we are the first to hear and see what is happening there,” ATESH said.
Russia has not confirmed losses in the attacks on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters or the Minsk landing ship.
