General Sergei Surovikin, head of the Russian Aerospace Forces and known for his proximity to the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, is dismissed from his post, according to the Russian newspaper RBC, to which a source indicated 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 sacked by the Russian Defense Ministry, a decision that is not officially known.
Surovikin, 56, known as “General Armageddon” for the bombing raids he launched in Syria, will also have automatically resigned as deputy commander of Russian forces operating in Ukraine as part of the invasion that began in February 2022.
The general took command of those troops in October last year, but after ordering the withdrawal of part of the Ukrainian region of Kherson, he was replaced in January 2023 by the chief of the General Staff, Valeri Gerasimov.
In the first months of the war, he participated in the capture of several cities in the eastern Lugansk region.
Surovikin fell out of favor after the failed armed rebellion led by Prigozhin, who at the time acknowledged having personally planned the operation with the aforementioned general to take the city of Bakhmut, something that the mercenaries achieved last May.
Criticizing Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Prigozhin claimed that with Surovikin in command, his men would never have had problems with the supply of equipment and ammunition, for which he blamed the former two on several occasions.
Since the Wagner Group uprising on June 23 and 24, Surovikin has disappeared from the public eye, although in mid-July a deputy, Andrei Kartapolov, assured: “He is resting.”
The Kremlin never confirmed the arrest of the general for supporting the mutiny, which was also denied by his own daughter.
Wagner’s mercenaries were subsequently sent to their new base, Belarus, from where they resumed their operations in Africa, Prigozhin confirmed.
Surovikin led, except for a few months, the Russian military contingent in Syria between 2017 and 2019, for which he was distinguished by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a Hero of Russia.
He became known as “General Armageddon” for the brutality of his operations against cities like Aleppo, controlled by the opposition to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Source: TSF
