General Sergei Surovikin, head of the Russian Aerospace Forces and known for his closeness to the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, has been removed from office, according to the Russian daily RBC, to which a source has announced his resignation.
“He is currently in the middle of a short vacation,” one source told the Russian daily, while a second source said Surovikin was fired by the Russian defense ministry, a decision that is not officially known.
Surovikin, 56, known as “General Armageddon” for the bombing he undertook in Syria, will also have automatically stepped down as deputy commander of Russian forces operating in Ukraine as part of the invasion that began in February 2022.
The general took over command of those forces in October last year, but after ordering the withdrawal of part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, he was replaced in January 2023 by the chief of staff, Valeri Gerasimov.
In the first months of the war, he took part in the capture of several cities of the eastern Lugansk region.
Surovikin fell out of favor after the failed armed uprising led by Prigozhin, who acknowledged at the time that he had personally planned the operation with the aforementioned general to take the city of Bakhmut, something the mercenaries accomplished last May.
Prigozhin criticized Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, assuring that his men led by Surovikin would never have had problems with the supply of equipment and ammunition, for which he repeatedly blamed the first two.
Since the Wagner group uprising on 23 and 24 June, Soerovikin has disappeared from the public eye, although a deputy, Andrei Kartapolov, assured in mid-July: “He is resting”.
The Kremlin never confirmed the general’s arrest for supporting the mutiny, which was also refuted by his own daughter.
After that, the Wagner mercenaries were sent to their new base, Belarus, from where they resumed operations in Africa, Prigozhin confirmed.
Soerovikin led the Russian military contingent in Syria between 2017 and 2019, except for a few months, for which he was honored as a Hero of Russia by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He became known as “General Armageddon” for the ferocity of his operations against cities like Aleppo, controlled by the opposition to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Source: DN
