Russian deputy navy chief linked to war crimes in Ukraine killed in Kursk

Major General Mikhail Gudkov, the deputy chief of Russian Navy, has been killed in Russia’s Kursk region, officials confirmed to AFP on Thursday.

Gudkov has previously commanded an infamous naval formation, the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, that was linked to mass killings in Ukraine's Bucha in the initial weeks of the war. Ukrainian forces discovered mass graves with dead Ukrainians in Bucha after driving away invading Russian forces retaking the town.

Since Russia launched the war on Ukraine in February 2022, Gudkov is one of the senior-most Russian officials to have been killed. While unconfirmed reports said he was killed in a precision strike, Russian state media just said that he was killed in “combat operations”.

“During combat operations in one of the border areas of the Kursk region on July 2, 2025… Major General Mikhail Evgenievich Gudkov was killed,” Russian state-owned RIA news agency quoted the defence ministry as saying.

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Gudkov was elevated to the deputy head of navy in March. Before that, he commanded the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, which has been infamous for its role in mass killings of civilians. Even as the unit is said to have been engaged in such attacks, it has performed poorly on the battlefield and has been repeatedly routed and devastated, requiring multiple rounds of replenishment and redeployment throughout the war after every round of defeat.

Even though the unit was counted among the elites of the Russian military before the war, its reputation is now in tatters as it has been involved in some of the lowest moments of the war in Bucha, Irpin, Pavlivka, and Vuhledar, according to Business Insider.

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“They’ve gotten their asses handed to them again and again and again,” William Alberque of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told Insider.

Despite such a record, a Russian governor heaped praises on Gudkov after death.

Oleg Kozhemyako, the head of Russia’s Primorye region in far east, said Gudkov “was killed carrying out his duty as an officer”, according to AFP.

Kozhemyako praised Gudkov as a “strong-spirited fighter” and said that he “did not stop going out in person to the positions of our marines” even after being appointed as the deputy commander of the Russian navy.