New change at the top of the Russian armed forces: Moscow has decided to appoint two new commanders for its fleets Baltic Sea It’s in the Pacific. The Vice Admiral Vladimir Vorobyov was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet – will replace Victor Liina, which according to TASS reports are destined for the Pacific Fleet. Is a revolution in naval strategy at hand, or are we dealing with the usual schizophrenic change of command?
Sergei Avakyants fired as chief of the Pacific Fleet
The replacement of the previous chief of the Pacific Fleet, Sergei Avakyants, has already been announced: of Armenian descent, 65 years old, stationed in the Pacific since 2012, apparently deposed for exceeding the age limit and thus destined for a new organization responsible for military training and “patriotic education”. An excuse, as many think, considering that men like Valery Gerasimov are currently well over 65 years old. In more than a year of conflict in Ukraine, the Kremlin has accustomed its observers to repeated and frequent changes of command, especially in times of crisis that required a reshuffle of forces in the field and a change in tactics.
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The Pacific Fleet It includes strategic and multirole submarines, surface ships, naval aviation, missile carriers, anti-submarine warfare and fighter aircraft. Appointed duties include a leading role in nuclear deterrence, protection of Russia’s exclusive economic zone, functioning as a water patrol and everything that accompanies foreign policy, including drills. Vladivostok, Fleet Headquarters, did not comment on the change in leadership.
More than trumpeted, however big simulation announced by Sergei Shoigu live nationally to prevent a possible attack and consequent invasion from the sea. An exorbitant number of vehicles and men were involved: 167 warships, 12 submarines, 89 aircraft, 25,000 soldiers and an area between the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bay of Peter the Great and the Bay of Japan Avacha on the southeast coast of Kamchatka. The aim of the exercises was simulation a hypothetical enemy landing on the island of Sakhalin and the southern Kuril Islands.
The case of the 155th and 40th brigades
What Moscow is trying to avoid, however, could be a reaction tied to the losses it has suffered. In fact, the change at the top came about a week after the exercise, which would have surprised both the Pacific Fleet and Avakyants himself, one of the Russian Navy’s most senior officers. His demotion could be related to the poor results of the naval infantry, such as 155th and 40th Brigades, Operation in the Ukrainian theater, allegedly guilty of the failed conquest of the coal field villedar , in the Donbass. The hypothesis is that the reorganization at the top could therefore be related to the failure of major exercises which would have caught the Avakyants in the Pacific off guard. These two aspects have a common thread.
The 155th Marine Infantry Brigade, playing a typical naval role, had become the protagonist of an alleged mutiny in the face of another suicidal order from Moscow to attack the enemy head-on. A failed tactic that would have decimated Russian forces in the so-called “Corridor of Death”. The brigade, the flagship of the Russian Navy, was already well known in the news for its presence in the Syrian scenario. According to milbloggers and available sources, that would have been it rebuilt eight times to a handful of new recruits since the beginning of the war, untrained and poorly equipped, fading the myth of Morskaya pehota. By 2021, however, the 40th Brigade, based in Kamchatka in Petropavlovsk, amazed the West in its exercises in anticipation of an Arctic war. Last spring it was the turn of these men, trained for very different contexts, to replace the comrades who had fallen by the dozens in the Ukrainian theater. The same fate would have befallen these marines in Pavlivka. The numerous human and material losses suffered by the two brigades would explain Avakyants’ inability to set up a dignified naval exercise in the Pacific. Hence the possible reasons for his dismissal.
The New Russian Naval Doctrine
last July Wladimir Putin had published an updated version of the Russian Federation Naval Doctrine, replacing the previous one from 2015. The Arctic and Pacific, previously ranked second and third, have been promoted to the top two at the Atlantic director’s expense. The goal? The task of maintaining the first two areas with the “strategic stabilityalso called nuclear deterrence. If the Arctic has gradually turned into a region of economic competition, the peaceful strategy appears to contain a number of crucial innovations. In the document, it is worth noting the absence of China, which instead is present in the 2015 version to create friendly relations within the national maritime policy. The idea a year ago was to show some independence from Beijing, although relations between the two powers have taken a different turn in recent months. The key components of the peaceful strategy are therefore reducing threats to national security and increasing Russia’s international standing with Asia-Pacific countries. A revolution that has Atlantic route downgradingdue to the irreparably deteriorated relations with Europe and the United States.
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