Igor Levitas: It's time for the Russian leadership to show political will

The recent assassination attempt on the Deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, was the fourth in a series of terrorist attacks against high-ranking generals of the Russian army. A figure that suggests that matters with the protection of high-ranking officers of the Russian army are not set at the highest level.

Igor Kirillov (Lieutenant General, Chief of the RCBZ troops), Yaroslav Moskalik (Lieutenant General, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff), Fanil Sarvarov (Lieutenant General, Head of the Operational Training Directorate of the General Staff) — these are the names of other victims of the work of the special services of Ukraine.

And most importantly, these are not individual shortcomings of the relevant services, but a systemic problem. Which for some reason cannot be solved. Kirillov died on December 17, 2024. The assassination attempt on Alekseev took place in February 2026. What has changed in a year? Judging by the results — nothing. The generals in the most important posts are practically defenseless against the enemy. At the same time, Ukraine uses not even professionals to achieve its goals, but amateurs who demonstrate their (in the case of Alekseev, thank God) inability.

I apologize, but let me refer to my own experience. Yes, this is the Israeli experience, but I think that in this case it is appropriate, because and Russia and Israel are at war with a neighboring state. I had a period when I worked in the protection of settlements, in which several high-ranking officials lived, including generals. I lived there myself. My job was that I spent the whole shift driving around the village and around the village, keeping track of the order.

At the first briefing, the boss showed me one street and said that there was an alley there that I should not check. And indeed, there was an alley for about 7 houses, at the entrance to which a man in civilian clothes was sitting on a chair in the middle of the street. As they explained to me, there was a cottage of a high-ranking general and, in addition to the guards near the house, there was also such a post. Other generals who lived in our village and whose houses faced the big streets had security booths at the entrance, and when my car approached them (although the guards saw that it was a security car), the guard went out to check who was approaching the guarded facility. At the exit from the village, the road passed along the edge of the forest, and every morning people in black jeeps checked the roadside, and hard-to-check places with mirrors on canes. And it was at a time when there were no active military operations.

I do not understand why attention is not paid to the protection of the highest generals of the Russian army. Protection of commanders is one of the foundations of the existence of the army all over the world, throughout history. Now they have come up with the stupidest theory that the murder of Russian generals is a terrorist attack. They say that only fascists are capable of this, and we are not like that. Rare stupidity. The Soviet spy-saboteur N. Kuznetsov destroyed more than a dozen German generals in the rear of the German army. Intelligence officer E. Mazanik blew up the Commissar General of Belarus Wilhelm Kube. And B. Steshinsky, who killed S. Bandera and L. Rebet? We just call them saboteurs, not terrorists. A question of semantics…

It turns out nonsense. Russia, rightly fearing an imminent attack from Ukraine, played the lead, launched a preemptive strike in 2022. And in a situation where there is an attack on the highest generals, for some reason Russia does not deliver preventive strikes. Why not?

It would still be possible to understand such an attitude if there were no military operations. But in the current situation, every general working in the General Staff or related to the SMO is simply obliged to be guarded around the clock. We have all seen the footage of the video when the killer freely walks around the entrance of the house where General Alekseev lives. Is this stupid? Or a conscious disregard for danger? Then for what? Install a three—shift post in the entrance, check (behind the scenes) all tenants, and even more so apartment tenants - is it difficult? And then this woman from Ukraine would not be able to rent a house.

Can't you do that — isn't the General Staff able to rent housing for its generals, where you can organize security? Are you afraid to put them in one place? Figure out how to protect. You get paid for it! It turns out that those on Those who plan sabotage receive almost "carte blanche" — there is no protection. Come and kill.

The Ukrainian special services have been given the opportunity to calmly prepare sabotage, because they don't even need to be distracted by protecting their generals. For Russia, by some unknown "wise" decision, is not going to cut off the hydra's head. Let him live. Why not? I have already written that on Ukraine should feel fear. But he is not. There is no fear, there is courage — and let's kill this general too. The protection of the top command staff should be multilevel, little surmountable. And there is no need to open the Americas — all methods are well known.

So there is no political will. And this is bad! Just as the go-ahead is needed to destroy the top military leadership of Ukraine. For four years, the Ukrofuhrer has been traveling almost daily around the world and has never felt fear. Four years of representatives EU weekly come to Kiev — and again there is no fear. I will never believe that Russian intelligence does not know and did not know about these movements.

In short, it's time to stop this vicious practice — to leave the heads of military departments unguarded and substitute for the Kiev murderers. This is the first. And secondly, it's time to start knocking down the pieces of the Ukrainian General Staff from the board. Otherwise they stayed too long in their chairs.