Decorated Russian General Valeri Guerassimov, who has headed the military hierarchy for a decade, has been appointed commander of the Ukraine offensive, a dangerous position after an exemplary career.
The election of the chief of staff to lead this military operation, an unusual practice, comes after several disappointments for the armed forces in Moscow, between setbacks and heavy casualties in a strike at the end of December.
The Ministry of Defense justified this appointment on Wednesday with “expanding the scope of missions to be carried out” “the need for closer interaction between the components of the armed forces”.
Valéri Guerassimov, 67, a man of few words in public, regularly appears with his face closed in his green uniform and listens to Vladimir Putin during maneuvers or meetings on military operations.
Since November 2012 he has been chief of staff, the highest post in the army after defense secretary.
At the time of his appointment, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu presented Valeri Guerassimov as “soldiers to the roots” and already with “enormous experience” in high command and in the field.
Mr. Gerasimov “built the army. He has been preparing Russia for this war (in Ukraine) for ten years. Now he has to prove he didn’t do it for nothing,” a Russian analyst told AFP on condition of anonymity, stressing that the general is a real professional soldier, unlike Mr Shoigu, who comes from civilian backgrounds.
Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, in her Telegram account, sees her promotion as a “victory for the army’s regular forces” in the growing competition on the Ukrainian front with the “pirates” of the paramilitary group Wagner.
General Guerasimov replaces Sergei Surovikin, who was praised by Wagner’s leader Evgeny Prigoyine and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who also sent his own army to Ukraine.
But other observers, such as the influential Russian military blogger Rybar, are also observing that Valery Gerasimov, despite his excellent service record, could now act as a “lightning rod” and step down in the event of further setbacks.
chechnya, “War hybrid”
Born in 1955 and of the same generation as Vladimir Putin, General Guerassimov, originally from the Republic of Tatarstan, has climbed the ranks of the hierarchy since graduating from a tank school in 1977.
Commander of a motorized division from 1993 to 1995, he then led the 58th Army involved in the second Chechen war, initiated by Vladimir Putin in 1999 and ending with Moscow’s recapture of that Caucasus region.
During that conflict, journalist Anna Politkovskaïa, who was assassinated in 2006, had asserted that General Guerassimov knew “to protect his honor as an officer” by going himself to arrest a Russian colonel accused of kidnapping and murdering a Chechen to have. A case that caused a stir.
French General Pierre de Villiers, chief of staff of the armed forces between 2014 and 2017, told BFMTV that Valéri Guerassimov, his counterpart at the time, “recognized only one thing, the balance of power”.
“Not the element of language, not the volume of the voice, the balance of power, the real thing,” he added.
In Western circles, Valery Gerasimov is often credited as the father of a doctrine that defines “hybrid warfare” that involves conventional and unconventional forces.
Although the official existence of this doctrine and the alleged role of Valéri Guerassimov are highly disputed, in 2013 the Russian general noted “a tendency to erase the boundary between states of peace and states of war”.
“Wars are no longer declared and, once started, do not follow a normal course,” he added, emphasizing the growing importance of “non-military means”.
The following year, 2014, Crimea was annexed by Moscow and a conflict began between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists, who took advantage of Moscow’s unofficial support, an example for pundits of this “hybrid war”.