Commander of Russia’s forces orders troops to cut their hair

THE commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine has ordered soldiers to cut their hair and shave, prompting a row with his bearded Chechen and mercenary allies.

Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s leader, criticised the order as a deliberate “provocation” and said it was a distraction from the real business of fighting.

“Let’s just drop our guns and go and shave,” Mr Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel. “What kind of nonsense is this?”

Western intelligence said that General Valery Gerasimov, appointed overall commander of Russia’s forces by Vladimir Putin this month, was trying to promote discipline in the army.

Gen Gerasimov had also ordered Russian soldiers to stop wearing “nonregulation uniform, travelling in civilian vehicles and using mobile phones”, the UK Ministry of Defence said.

Russian soldiers’ ill-discipline over using their mobile phones has given away their positions throughout the war but videos from battlefields in Ukraine have shown them wearing standard army fatigues, shaved and with military-style haircuts.

The order to smarten up may be a move by the Russian defence ministry to undermine the Wagner Group, the Kremlin’s formerly deniable mercenary outfit that has grown in prominence this year.

Wagner has deployed about 50,000 men to Donbas, mainly scruffy unshaved ex-convicts fighting in a variety of mismatched army fatigues.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenaries, sees his fighters as superior to the Russian military, which he has criticised as uncaring, tactically inept and vain.