Russian General Sergei Surovikin, dismissed as head of the Russian Aerospace Forces after the Wagner Group rebellion, was appointed president of a military coordination commission of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Eurasia Daily reported on Sunday.
According to this news agency, the designation of Surovikin – who stopped being seen in public on June 24, the date of the failed rebellion of the Wagner paramilitary group led by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, and who reappeared on August 4 with his wife – was unanimously approved by the CIS Council of Defense Ministers, a regional intergovernmental organization that includes 11 countries, all of them former republics of the former Soviet Union.
Since the rise of Wagner’s boss, and whom Surovikin tried to convince to renounce the rebellion, the media and social networks have speculated about the general’s situation and fate.
Surovikin fell into disgrace after the failed armed rebellion led by Prigozhin, who never hid his admiration for the general. The two men were involved in plans to conquer the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut (in the Donetsk region, to the east) and which came to fruition last May.
The Kremlin (Russian Presidency) never confirmed the general’s arrest due to his ties to the then head of the Wagner Group.
On August 23, the day Prigozhin’s private plane crashed, it was revealed that Surovikin had been replaced as head of the Aerospace Forces by General Victor Afzalov.
His appointment as head of the CIS Coordinating Commission for Air Defense Affairs was confirmed on Sunday.
Surovikin, known for the toughness with which he led several Russian military operations in Syria, assumed leadership of troops fighting in Ukraine in October 2022, but after ordering the withdrawal of Russian forces from part of the Kherson region, he was apart from that command. in January 2022. 2023 by the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Valeri Guerasimov.
The Russian military offensive on Ukrainian territory, launched on February 24 of last year, plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since the Second World War (1939-1945).
Ukraine’s Western allies have supplied weapons to kyiv and passed successive sanctions packages against Russian interests to try to diminish Moscow’s ability to finance the war effort.
Read all about the war in Ukraine here
Source: TSF
