Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 21, 2023 Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

Kremlin newswire TASS, citing an unnamed source, reported that Liina replaced Admiral Sergei Avakyants who had commanded the Russian Pacific Fleet since 2012.5 Unofficial reports of Liina’s appointments coincide with the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) announcement that the Pacific Fleet and elements of the Russian Aerospace Forces completed drills in the Pacific under the supervision of Comma. [...] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on April 20 that a Russian Su-34 bomber accidentally dropped a bomb while flying over Belgorod City.9 The explosion left a crater with a 20-meter (65-foot) radius in the southern part of the city and injured three civilians.10 The cause of the accidental bombing remains unclear, as does the reason for flying an armed bomber over a populated city. [...] The Angry Patriots Club previously amplified a forecast that miscontextualized Prigozhin’s April 14 essay as a call to end the war in Ukraine, stating that Prigozhin’s essay was the start of a political campaign to move to the defense of new territories and freeze the war.18 The forecast noted that the Russian MoD and Russian private military companies (PMCs) are already recruiting contract servic. [...] ISW previously assessed that the Russian MoD had likely advised Putin early on about measures such as mobilization that could have changed the course of the war earlier, and the Russian MoD had previously ordered a short-lived operational pause over the summer of 2022, for example.23 Prigozhin’s recent cooperation with the Russian MoD indicates that he may have reached an agreement with the Russia. [...] Putin recently signed bills expanding legal punishments for the discreditation of all Russian personnel fighting in Ukraine and for the misappropriation of Russian military assets, and Russian security organs have increasingly used these laws as pretexts for the arrest of Russian citizens.27 ISW has previously assessed that the Kremlin may be using the pretext of threats to Russia’s defense indust.