Various media outlets reported that Surovikin had fallen out of favor with the Kremlin following the aborted mutiny by Wagner in June, and that he was being investigated for possible complicity.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the private military group Wagner, accused the Russian military's chief of staff Valery Gerasimov of ordering an aerial attack “in the middle of civilian cars.”
US officials determined as early as January that there was an internal power struggle underway between the mercenary Wagner Group and the Russian government, and have been gathering and closely monitoring intelligence on the volatile dynamic ever since.