Valery Gerasimov has been Chief of Staff of the Russian Army since 2012, the country’s top military official. Nobody was responsible…
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Valery Gerasimov has been Chief of Staff of the Russian Army since 2012, the country’s top military official. Nobody has been in office that long. But the outcome of the war in Ukraine could change the situation. A year after the conflict began, the Russian army is impoverished and humiliated: according to Moscow’s plans, it was supposed to be a blitzkrieg. Gerasimov has been in command of operations since early January: failure could erase his military legacy. He succeeds Sergei Surovikin as the new commander of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine. Surovikin became his deputy, along with the commander of the ground forces Oleg Salyukov and deputy chief of staff Alexei Kim. The decision was justified by the Russian Ministry of Defense with the “expansion of the scope of tasks” and the need for “greater efficiency”.
Gerasimov and hybrid warfare
For the tsar, Gerasimov is a loyalist: he is the man sitting to the right of President Vladimir Putin and who, together with him and Defense Minister Shoigu, planned the details of the conflict. His name is inextricably linked to the theory of hybrid warfare – the so-called “Gerasimov Doctrine” – which envisages attacking the opponent militarily as well as economically, cognitively, technologically and electronically, including through unconventional methods. He prefers “special forces” to traditional armies: small, flexible, and fast-acting units, even without insignia and insignia. But the struggles are built up above all through psychological weapons, disinformation, and defense of interests outside of one’s own territory. The new actors on the scene are hackers, the soldiers of cyber warfare capable of striking at the heart of business but also of politics.
The first to theorize the “Gerasimov Doctrine” was Mark Galeotti, political scientist, professor of transnational crime and Russian security affairs and director of the consulting firm Mayak Intelligence, author of, among other things, the book “Putin’s Wars”. Galeotti explains that it is less an offensive tactic and more a defensive strategy inserted in the international context. At 67, Gerasimov is one step away from retirement. “I can’t help but suspect that his main priority will be not to mess things up so much that he falls out of favor – Galeotti explained to Newsweek – but at the same time he’s under pressure from Putin, who wants some trophies. ” .
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