Vladimir Putin has appointed a new commander to lead Russia’s ailing war in Ukraine, said to have a reputation for “brutality” and “total ruthlessness”.
The new appointment follows the reported sacking earlier this week of the commanders of two of Russia‘s five military regions, following a series of dramatic Ukrainian counteroffensives which have eaten heavily into Moscow’s military gains and are believed by US intelligence to have fuelled division within the Kremlin.
In a further major reshuffle, Russia’s foreign ministry quietly announced on Saturday that General Sergei Surovikin had been appointed to lead the war effort, but did not say who – if anyone – he was replacing.
Moscow had not previously specified that anyone was in overall military command of its invasion, although British military intelligence claimed that General Alexander Dvornikov had been appointed to take charge of Russia’s forces two months after the war began, in an attempt to “centralise command and control”.
Prior to the announcement on Saturday, the new stated commander of Moscow’s troops had been commanding troops in Ukraine’s south, where president Volodymyr Zelensky claims to have recaptured more than 200 square miles in a week.
The day before Mr Putin ordered his invasion, Mr Surovikin was sanctioned by the European Union, which listed him as the commander-in-chief of Russian Aerospace Forces – and therefore “responsible for air operations in or to Ukraine”.
Aged 55, the decorated commander has a long and bloody history of leading Russian soldiers domestically and abroad, and was described by the UK’s Ministry of Defence in June of having a career “dogged with allegations of corruption and brutality” for more than 30 years.
He is reported to have spent seven months in prison after participating in the failed coup d’etat attempted by Soviet hardliners in 1991, allegedly leading a division which shot at and drove armoured tanks through barricades set up by pro-democracy demonstrators, killing three people.
Mr Surovikin was eventually acquitted without trial and, according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, promoted by then-president Boris Yeltsin to the position of Major for “splendidly carrying out his military duty”.
In 1995, Mr Surovikin received a suspended sentence for illegally trading arms in a conviction that was later overturned, according to a report by the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative US think-tank, which said: “In the army, Surovikin has a reputation for total ruthlessness.”
He has since served in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya, and from March 2017 led the Russian military in Syria. A Human Rights Watch report on possible war crimes in Idlib named Mr Surovikin as among military leaders who might bear “command responsibility for violations”.
In Ukraine, he was blamed directly for strikes on civilians, with Kyiv’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov saying – in the wake of July strikes on an apartment block and two holiday camps in Odesa which killed 21 people – that “Surovikin knows how to fight with bombers and missiles, that’s what he does”.
Following the announcement on Saturday by Moscow’s foreign ministry, Russian political scientist Greg Yudin said: “It is highly symbolic that Sergei Surovikin, the only officer who ordered to shoot on revolutionaries in August 1991 and actually killed three people, is now in charge of this last-ditch effort to restore Soviet Union.
“These people knew what they were doing, and they know now.”
His appointment, Moscow’s third senior military reselection in one week, comes after rare outbursts of public criticism of those in charge of Russia’s war effort, after Ukraine retook thousands of square miles in Kharkiv, with its troops now advancing on the key city of Kherson.
Among the state TV hosts, politicians and military figures who lashed out at those in charge was Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, describing the military as riddled with nepotism and calling for senior officers to be stripped of their ranks and sent barefoot to the warfront – drawing noises of approval from some hawkish members of Moscow’s elite.
Mr Prigozhin was among hardliners who welcomed Mr Surovkin’s appointment on Saturday, describing him as “the most able commander in the Russian army” and a “legendary figure” who “was born to serve his motherland faithfully”.
Of the 1991 coup attempt, the Wagner founder added: “Having received an order, Surovikin was that officer who without hesitation got in his tank and went forward to save his country.”
The announcement came as Mr Putin was dealt a huge logistical and symbolic blow, the day after his 70th birthday, as a massive explosion partly destroyed the Kerch bridge linking annexed Crimea to Russia, completed on Mr Putin’s orders in 2018, four years after the peninsula’s seizure.
While Ukraine has not taken direct responsibility, Mr Zelensky’s top aide Mykhailo Podolyak, said: “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”
