The umpteenth chapter of the other war between Ukraine and Russia, the (dis)information contest, revolves around Viktor Sokolov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet who Kyiv claims to have killed, while Moscow maintains its silence. The mystery continued for at least a few hours, until Russia released graphic evidence from the admiral on Tuesday to refute the news, without giving details.
Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said Monday that in the precision strike with Storm Shadow cruise missiles they carried out against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, on the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, on 22 September, 34 Russian soldiers died, including Sokolov, the head of the fleet in charge of firing missiles towards Ukraine from the south. Another 105 Russian personnel were injured.
The objective of the operation, which Kyiv classified as “successful”, was to behead the fleet command, since at the time of the attack a meeting of several of its senior leaders was being held. According to the note from the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, the damage was such that “the headquarters (of the Russian Fleet)” could not “be repaired.” Russia, which does not normally recognize military casualties, admitted that a soldier was missing.
In remarks over the weekend, Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, gave the first detailed account of the attack to Voice of America, according to which Alexander Romanchuk, a Russian general in command of forces in Zaporizhzhia, in the front line of the southeastern front, was “in a very serious condition.” The commander of the motorized riflemen of the Northern Fleet, Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov, was also wounded. However, Budanov did not mention Sokolov.
The longer Moscow’s silence continued after Kyiv’s announcement, the longer the shadow of Sokolov’s death grew. “Our information system remains silent and is driving millions of our people into the arms of information networks hostile to Russia,” analyst and former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov said yesterday on Telegram. “We are all waiting for simple and clear information about the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” he wrote, while distrusting the Ukrainian information.
Sokolov, 61, was named the new commander of the Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet in August 2022, ostensibly to shore up Crimea’s defenses after it was first hit by a series of Ukrainian explosions last summer. He thus replaced Igor Osipov, who was in charge of the fleet when it lost its flagship to a Ukrainian attack, the cruiser Moskva, and the bombing of the Saky airfield in Crimea (about 70 kilometers north of Sevastopol).
He previously held a series of positions in the Pacific and Northern Fleets, serving as deputy commander in the latter, with which he participated in the Russian intervention in the Syrian war in 2016.
The mystery seemed solved a day later. Although the Kremlin continued without commenting on the information released by Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense released some images this Tuesday, showing the supposedly deceased commander on a large screen during a meeting of the Russian Army’s senior staff. Apparently, Sokolov, one of the highest-ranking military personnel in the Russian Navy, participated by videoconference in the meeting chaired in Moscow by the head of Defense, Sergei Shoigu.
A statement, which did not mention the name of the soldier, indicated that the meeting took place on Tuesday. In the images it appeared that Sokolov was sitting on a hospital stretcher, behind which there was the Russian flag, as he was resting his back on a white cushion.
