'Meatgrinder' commander disappears

Officer not seen for days after being fired by Putin

- BY CHRIS HUGHES Defence and Security Editor

A RUSSIAN “meatgrinder” commander renowned for bloody battlefield bungles has not been seen in public for days after the Kremlin sacked him.

Under Sukhrab Akhmedov's command, thousands of troops had been sent on near-suicidal full-frontal assaults resulting in large frontline casualty rates.

Once favoured by the Kremlin, the career officer, 51, is among a number of ex-leaders accused of sending troops on hopeless missions into battlefields that claimed many Russian lives on frontlines dubbed “the meatgrinder”.