The former head of the operational documentation department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Major General Vladimir Lyapkin, died on March 17. Pro-Kremlin propagandist Oleh Tsarev reported on this on the social network, writes TASR according to The Moscow Times.
“Voloďa died in the Northern Military District, he served in the Barsa-33 unit… His call sign was ‘Batyj’,” wrote Tsarev on the VKontakte social network.
In 2013, Ľapkin received the rank of major general and personally participated in dispersing Euromaidan. “In the most critical moments of the protests, he had to engage in direct physical confrontations, and in such situations he did not hide behind his subordinates, but rather led the way and set an example.” Tsarev stated. According to him, he was responsible for wiretapping, surveillance and intelligence gathering in the SBU.
After the change of government power in Ukraine Ľapkin was released from the SBU. He fled to Russia and later settled in the annexed Crimea.
After the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he was in the occupied Kherson region appointed deputy head of the “security service” and, according to the SBU, participated in repression against the civilian population. The rank “remained de facto for Lapkin: for everyone he remained a major general of the Russian special services”, according to Tsarev.
Since the beginning of the war against Ukraine, two dozen Russian generals have been killed, it follows from the estimates of investigative media based on open sources.
On Thursday, April 2, a French radio station RFI announced the death of General Andrej Averjanov from the military intelligence (GRU). He was the commander of the elite unit 29155, which, according to Western intelligence services, focused on covert operations abroad, including the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with novichok in 2018 in Salisbury and the explosion of an ammunition depot in Vrběticy in 2014.
According to the RFI source Averjanov died in December 2025 in the Mediterranean Sea during an attack on the tanker of the Russian “shadow fleet” Qendil.
