This decision, unusually published by Moscow, comes after several defeats suffered by the Russian army in Ukraine.
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Posted on 8/10/2022 4:34 PM Updated on 8/10/2022 5:39 PM
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This follows a series of bitter setbacks on the ground. The Russian Army announced on Saturday October 8 the appointment of a new commander in Ukraine. “Army General Sergei Surovikin has been appointed commander of the combined force group in the area of special military operations in Ukraine,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on Telegram.
Sergei Surovikin, 55, 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 that began in 2015. By then he was leading the group of “southern” forces in Ukraine. according to a July report by the Russian Ministry.
This decision was published by Moscow, a rare event. The name of his predecessor was never officially announced, but according to Russian media it was General Alexander Dvornikov, also a veteran of the second Chechen war and commander of Russian forces in Syria from 2015 to 2016.
Moscow’s forces were driven out of most of the northeastern Kharkiv region in early September thanks to a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Russian troops also lost 500 square kilometers of territory in the Kherson region in the south. The backlash has drawn criticism from Russia’s elite, including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and senior parliamentarian Andrei Kartapolov.