Colonel-General Aleksey Kuzmenkov, who was born in the city of Gorlovka in the Donetsk region of the Ukrainian SSR, has been appointed curator of the logistics of the RF Armed Forces, Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia. This is reported by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in its Telegram channel.
Before Kuzmenkov, Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev was responsible for the logistics of the Russian army. At the end of April 2023, Russian pro-military Telegram channels began to announce his resignation, but this was not officially confirmed. Mizintsev led the siege of Mariupol, which, according to the Ukrainian side, killed tens of thousands of people.
Since 2019, Kuzmenkov has served as Deputy Director of the Federal Service of the Russian National Guard Troops. Prior to that, he was the head of the Logistics Headquarters of the RF Armed Forces and Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District for Logistics.
Problems with the supply of the Russian army have been observed from the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was noted that the Russian military used dry rations overdue for several years, and there was a lack of food. After the mobilization was announced, it turned out that, according to Andrey Gurulev, a member of the State Duma Committee on Defense, it was not clear where to distribute one and a half million sets of military uniforms from personnel reception points. As a result, the families and friends of many mobilized had to buy equipment for them on their own.
Earlier, "military commissar"-propagandist Alexander Sladkov wrote that the appointment of Kuzmenkov would be "key". The Russian pro-military channel WarGonzo suggested that the unconfirmed resignations of senior officials in the Ministry of Defense were the result of a visit to the Russian-occupied territories of the Luhansk and Kherson regions of Ukraine. There, he was allegedly informed of "real problems" by "officers in the fields who know the real situation."