On the same day that one of the greatest symbols of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine was partially destroyed, the Russian army announced on Saturday (8) the appointment of a new commander for the war. The decision came amid a series of defeats by Russian forces on the battlefields and mounting pressure on the country’s President Vladimir Putin.
General Sergei Surovikin, 55, was named commander for what Moscow still calls a “special military operation”. According to a July report from the Russian Defense Ministry, he was leading a grouping of forces in the south of the invaded country.
Surovikin is a veteran of the civil war in Tajikistan in the 1990s, the second Chechen war in the 2000s, and the Russian intervention in Syria, launched in 2015. It is the third high-ranking military appointment made by the Kremlin in just one week.
The name of his predecessor was never officially revealed, but according to Russian media, he was General Alexander Dnornikov, another veteran of the second Chechen war and commander of Russian forces in Syria from 2015 to 2016. According to British military intelligence, he had been named in an attempt to “centralize command and control”.
The replacement indicates that the mission was unsuccessful. This Saturday, in the midst of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, a strong explosion destroyed part of the only bridge that connects Russian territory to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. The structure is considered a crucial supply route for Putin’s troops in the invaded country.
The change in command followed the dismissal of leaders from two of Russia’s five military regions. In recent weeks, troops have suffered a series of setbacks in northeastern and southern Ukraine.
Moscow forces were expelled in early September from most of the Kharkiv region — as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that allowed Kiev to regain thousands of square kilometers of territory.
Russian troops also lost 500 square kilometers in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine and escaped a siege in Liman, a major logistical hub currently controlled by the Ukrainians.
The series of defeats led the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to criticize, above all, the Russian military command. A senior parliamentary official, Andrei Kartapolov, publicly urged the army to “stop lying” about its defeats.
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