Russian President Vladimir Putin was shown on video on Tuesday, purportedly in the part of Ukraine's Kherson region controlled by Russian forces, meeting Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, a commander who British military intelligence said had recently been restored to a major role in the Ukraine campaign.
Here are some facts about Teplinsky:
- Born in 1969 in Soviet Ukraine, in the now war-torn Donetsk region, Teplinsky served with Russian forces stationed in Moldova's Russian-speaking breakaway region of Transdniestria, and putting down an Islamist insurgency in Chechnya.
- He was appointed in June 2022 to head Russia's elite airborne forces, which had suffered heavy casualties in the earliest days of the war in Ukraine. Britain's Ministry of Defence said he was dismissed from a senior operational role in the Ukraine campaign in January 2023.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner militia who has publicly feuded with the Russian defence establishment, praised Teplinsky in March, calling him "honest, competent ... uncompromising and fearless".
- Britain's Ministry of Defence said in one of its daily reports on Sunday that Teplinsky was likely to be "one of the few senior Russian generals widely respected by the rank-and-file".
- It said Teplinsky's new remit was likely to go beyond commanding only airborne forces.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
