General Sergei Surovikin, known as ‘General Armegeddon’, was in charge of the Russian war campaign in Ukraine from October 2022 – when he was overheard proposing nuclear escalation
The devastating war between Russia and Ukraine very nearly ended up being a nuclear one after a leading Putin commander, nicknamed ‘General Armageddon’, made a chilling suggestion.
Following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, General Sergei Surovikin, 58, brought up the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons relatively early on. In fact, his idea was overheard by US intelligence in October 2022, just eight months after the Russian despot’s invasion, according to a new account of America’s hidden role in the conflict. Surovikin wanted to prevent Ukrainian troops from crossing the Dnipro River and heading for the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula.
“Until that moment, US intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukrain at 5 to 10 per cent,” says the new report. “Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probaility was 50 per cent.”
The scare led the Americans to consider pressing Ukraine to slow their advance in the Kherson region amid fears it could trigger a wider, and nuclear, war. It is unclear whether Putin actively considered using nuclear weapons at this moment, but he is believed to have come under Chinese as well as US pressure not to do so.
Surovikin was in charge of the Russian war campaign in Ukraine from October 2022 until Putin removed responsibility from him in January 2023, handing it to his most senior commander – General Valery Gerasimov. Surovikin, Russia’s most feared commander, was further sidelined by Putin later on amid fears he was colluding with the leader of a coup bid against Putin’s regime, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June 2023, who later died in a plane crash amid speculation he had been assassinated by the Kremlin.
Rumours have swirled that Surovikin had been detained on Putin’s orders at a secret military prison or under house arrest alongside his multi-millionaire wife, Anna, 52, in Moscow. He is not believed to be on a special mission to Africa. Surovikin was notorious for his brutality in wars in Syria and Chechnya and faced claims of corruption over a £3 million ‘English-style mansion’ he shared with his wife.
The latest insight into how the war and Western involvement, particularly American, comes as a New York Times investigation has revealed that the US was “woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood”. The investigation uncovered how US support enabled Ukrainians “to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy”.
The investigation comes amid a tense time in the war, as President Donald Trump weighs in and attempts to broker a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine. Meanwhile Senior Russian senator Alexey Kondratyev, a former army colonel, insists Putin’s forces will not stop conquering Ukraine as he mocks Britain’s army as tiny and incapable of peacekeeping, ridiculing Sir Keir Starmer for ‘pretending to be Cromwell’.
Defying calls from Trump for a ceasefire, he said: “As far as the Russian Armed Forces are concerned, we must understand that today we are moving forward on the entire front. We will continue to move forward. We have gained a lot of combat experience…
“We will not stop under someone’s threats that we will get 12,000 French and British soldiers. And genetlemen, in Britain, where, well, of course, you can try to pretend to be Cromwell, I’m talking about [Sir Keir] Starmer. You have to count the 72,500 people in Britain who are in the army…
“And the army in Britain today is smaller than it was in Napoleon’s time. Minus another 12,000 [to be killed in Ukraine] – 60,000 left on this whole island. And they’re telling everyone we’re kind of afraid of a Russian invasion.
“You should be afraid… Until denazification and demilitarisation takes place [in Ukraine], we will not recognise [peacekeepers] from the British and the French. These [troops] will be regarded as relevant targets, participants in the conflict.”
