This whole situation doesn't sit right with me. Why would Russia panic fire generals now, that their situation on the front has vastly improved? They took Bakhmut for prestige, they stopped the "greatest Ukrainian counterofensive" dead in its tracks, while at the same time humiliating a ton of western tech, they start pushing in the north, and now they fire the most competent generals? I get that there are political considerations to take into account, but Russia has always been pretty good at adapting to war developing poorly. Firing generals AFTER the war, I would understand, because of political competition, but this is the equivalent of firing Zhukov in the middle of the battle of Stalingrad.
I'm not saying that I agree with the hypothesis I typed out. I was just pointing out that this is the perception that mainstream (and non-mainstream) Western audiences tend to have.
I agree that if we look at the situation logically, it makes little sense. But Western narratives don't always make sense.
EDIT: I don't know why my reply got cut off, but here's the rest of it.
What I think you're overlooking, is the idea that some Russian generals are incompetent, and that those incompetent generals are still on the front line. We have very limited ways of gauging which generals are good and which ones aren't.
So any changes in officers are questionable, because we simply lack a lot of contextual information.
When I first heared about Surovikin being taken out of the public eye, and what has been further reinforced by other able generals following suit, is that Russia is probably going to form Stavka. Russians have more resources now, more manpower, while the Ukrainian offensive turned out to be a nothing-burger, and on top of that Zelensky got schooled like a kid in Vilnus. Remember how around February-March everyone was talking about how much is riding on the success of the counter-offensive? That if the Ukrainians don't show enough success with western weapons, the support for Ukraine in the west might waver? Well, the counter-offensive has been going for almost 2 months, and the frontline hasn't budged.
I think you're a little too hasty in making assessments. I agree that the Ukrainian offensive fell short of expectations. However, I also don't think we can reliably judge how well Russians have performed either in defense, or on the counter-attack. Both sides are highly selective in what footage they publish. There may very well be units that are very poorly run, despite being "successful".
I would understand generals being pulled to form some sort of high command in anticipation of wide-scale offensive operations, maybe declaring full-scale war. I would even understand them being sent on a tour to share their experience at military academies. What I wouldn't understand is them being sent out to pasture in the middle of a war. That would pretty much fly in the face of 300 years of Russian military behavior.
You're missing the context of the Wagner mutiny. The firing of generals at the moment, is particularly suspect because there are definitely people in the Russian Army who are sympathetic to Wagner.
In that context, changes in officers could be happening because of incompetency, political loyalty, scapegoating, or otherwise.
