Sergei Surovikin, at the end of October in Moscow.RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS S (EFE)
When the most radical Russian sector congratulated itself on the advances of its troops in Soledar, the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, hit the table this Wednesday and replaced the valued Sergei Surovikin by the criticized Valeri Gerasimov as sole head of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine.
A change that has provoked criticism and that comes just one day after the rise of another general who has been openly condemned by the ultranationalist wing of the Kremlin, Alexander Lapin, accused of giving away the city of Limán during the autumn debacles.
This dance of chairs reaffirms internal dissension within the Russian high command, where the Wagner company of mercenaries wages war and claims victories to their own account.
Gerasimov (Kazán, 67 years old) is also the head of the Russian General Staff, and the greatest criticism has fallen on him and Shoigu for the failed planning of the war.
The Kremlin expected a quick campaign, but Putin's land, sea and air offensive announced on February 24 is well on its way to a year, and the general spent all these months in the discreet background.
The Ministry of Defense has justified the reorganization of the high command “with the expansion of the scale of tasks to be solved;
the need to organize a closer interaction between the different branches of the Armed Forces;
and improving the effectiveness of command and control of combat groups”.
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Last hour of the war in Ukraine
Gerasimov will now serve as the head of the combined forces fighting in Ukraine, and will have General Oleg Saliukov as deputy commander-in-chief of the land forces;
Colonel General Alexei Kim as Deputy Chief of the General Staff;
and Surovikin himself as deputy commander of the Aerospace Forces.
The dissensions are notable within the high command.
The owner of the Wagner mercenary company, now also nourished by thousands of inmates in exchange for the promise of their pardons, has announced the conquest of Soledar, in the province of Donetsk, while the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian government assure that the fighting is still going on.
The businessman Yevgueni Prigozhin, in conflict with Shoigu over the loss of contracts with the army, said Tuesday that the city is under control thanks exclusively to his forces: "I want to emphasize that no units other than Wagner's fighters participated in the assault on Soledar ”, affirmed the press service of the person known as Putin's Chef, who also released a video of his alleged visit to one of the mines he aspires to own in the area.
For his part, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry made no mention of Wagner in his daily report and reduced the importance of this advance to just one paragraph, Russia's first notorious one in half a year.
“Airborne units have blockaded Soledar to the north and south of the city.
The Russian Aerospace Forces attack the enemy strongholds and the assault squads fight in the city”, was the brief comment on that battle.
Gerasimov succeeds Surovikin, whose appointment in October as sole head of the Russian forces in Ukraine had been greeted with applause by the most fervent sector of the war.
The troops had just been driven out of the Kharkiv region by the Ukrainian army and the western part of Kherson was about to fall.
Surovikin was then in charge of Russian aviation and had been a strong advocate of bombing against civilian infrastructure in Syria, as he would later replicate in Ukraine.
In addition, he had previous experience in other conflicts: from the fighting in Chechnya to the repression of the protests by the coup d'état by the Soviet leadership in 1991. For aviation he was a
boots
, the nickname by which they refer in the air force Russian to the ground officers arriving at the corps.
Valeri Gerasimov, in December in Moscow.SERGEY FADEICHEV (AFP)
Prigozhin and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov blessed Surovikin's appointment after hammering criticism at another commander, Alexander Lapin, over the loss of Liman.
The Chechen leader described the latter as "mediocre" weeks before Surovikin organized the orderly withdrawal from the city of Kherson, although the latter was justified by all as being considered an untenable place.
New Year's Bombing
With Surovikin at the helm, criticism of the high command had softened, except for the New Year's bombardment in Makiivka that cost the lives of tens or hundreds of mobilized, depending on the Russian or Ukrainian version.
However, the new appointments have been a jug of cold water for ultranationalism.
Lapin, who had gone into the background just three months ago, has now been appointed by Shoigu as head of the Russian ground army, while Surovikin takes a step back in projecting him to command.
Sources in the presidency of the digital newspaper
Meduza
assured in October that Putin "is not really interested in any general gaining too much popularity in the war."
Now, the Kremlin has kept its distance from these relays.
“There are open presidential decrees and there are presidential decrees classified as secret.
Among the published decrees there is nothing ”, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, responded cryptically this Wednesday about Lapin’s rise.
“Surovikin has been demoted to deputy commander.
How many hopes did the 'patriots' have... And it turns out that their mission was to surrender Kherson”, ironized the independent journalist Dmitri Kolezev on Twitter.
One of the Russian pro-war analysts, Boris Rozhin, emphasized on his Telegram channel that this reorganization "is an attempt to avoid the current duplicity of command", although he stressed that the concentration of power in Gerasimov, who will have the units subordinate to him fighting in Ukraine at the same time that he is chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, "is without precedent."
He “he Will be personally responsible for the success of the operation.
If this will be useful for the cause, we will know very soon... ”, he warned about the soldier.
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