A top Russian commander has been seriously injured on the battleground in Ukraine, according to Russian officials.
Lt.- Gen. Esedulla Abachev, a leading commander in the Leningrad Military District, has been at the front since the beginning of the war, said Sergei Melikov, the head of the Russian republic of Dagestan.
“He has held several important commanding positions, but has always been at the very front, at the most responsible and therefore most dangerous sections of the front,” Melikov wrote on Telegram on Monday. 
He didn’t provide further details on Abachev’s condition.
He only stated that the 57-year-old was being treated in “one of the best military hospitals in the country.”
According to the Ukrainian military intelligence service HUR, several of the general’s limbs had to be amputated as a result of the injuries sustained in a HUR strike on a military column in the western Russian region of Kursk.
So far, at least 12 generals have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Leningrad Military District was re-established in 2024 on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and encompasses all regions of north-western Russia up to the Ural Mountains.
Its name is a reference to the Soviet name for St Petersburg.
