cnn has exclusively obtained documents that suggest a top russian general, sergei surovikin, who has not been seen in public since last saturday s short-lived revolt was a secret vip member of the mercenary wagner group that led the rebellion. cnn s matthew chance joins us now from moscow for more on the man nicknamed general armageddon for his ruthless tactics. matthew, these documents, what do they tell us about general surovikin? well, they re pretty interesting, because they suggest, or they tell us, or they show according to the dossier zehr, which is a russian investigative organization that obtained these documents and then showed them exclusively to us, they show that there is a registration document for general surovikin that assigns
him a wagner sort of membership number, i suppose. that membership number then appears in various other lists of people who belong to the wagner mercenary organization. it s a vip member. it doesn t sort of indicate to us what vip status actually means, whether that means he is on the payroll, if there is any other kind of financial payment, any evidence of that. it does strongly imply that there is a very, very close relationship between this general and the mercenary organization that carried out that attempted military, you know, rebellion at the weekend. and of course it s not just general surovikin. the dossier center says there are about 30 other senior military and intelligence officials from russia who are also on that list and designated as vip members of wagner.
there have been reports in the new york times in particular suggesting that general surovikin knew in advance about wagner s plans to stage this military uprising. and all that, along with these latest revelations about his close contacts and membership even of wagner has, you know, fueled suspicion that he could some way be implicated. but, again, the kremlin are not commenting on where he is, and it s not clear at this point when he will reemerge. matthew, as always. thank you so much for your reporting. all right. perspective now from cnn national security analyst steve hall, a former cia chief of russia operations. steve, a document with a whole lot of names, including general surovikin s on it as some kind of vip member of wagner, if you re the kremlin security forces right now, what are you doing with this list? well, first, i d love to know
[music playing] there is growing intrigue tonight over a top russian general who has gone missing. documents that were exclusively shared with cnn suggest that general sergey surovikin was actually a secret vip member of
cnn has exclusively obtained documents that suggests a top russian general, sergey surovikin, who has not been seen in public since last saturday short-lived or vault was a secret vip member of the mercenary wagner group that led the rebellion. cnn s matthew chance joins us now from moscow for more on the man nicknamed general armageddon through his ruthless tactics. matthew, these documents, what do they tell us about general surovikin? they are pretty interesting. because they suggest or tell us and show according to the dossier, which is a russian investigative organization, that obtained these documents and show them exclusively to us, they show that there is a registration document for general surovikin, that is science in a wagner sort of membership number, i suppose. that membership number than appears in various other lists of people who belong to the wagner mercenary organization. it s a vip member. it does not indicate to us what vip status actually means, whether he s on