In the eleventh month of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the military command of the same changes hands for the third time. It is now up to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, to fill the position hitherto held by Sergei Surovikin, known in Syria as General Armageddon because of his CV. In Lviv, the Ukrainian president heard renewed support for military aid, while his adviser said in an interview that the Ukrainian army can defeat the Russians in 2023 if it receives the requested weapons.
General Surovikin’s reputation as a ruthless commander of operations in Syria was not enough to keep ahead of Russian forces in Ukraine. According to the Defense Ministry statement, the change is due to “the expansion of the scale of tasks at hand and the need to organize closer interaction between the forces”.
Still according to Moscow, Surovikin will be demoted to an aide to Gerasimov, the new top commander of the “special military operation”, along with two other generals, Alexei Kim and Oleg Salyukov. Surovikin, who led the troops in the southern region, had been promoted in October, as the Russian army piled up battlefield defeats and retreats, especially in northeastern and eastern Ukraine.
Under his command, Russia changed tactics and unleashed waves of Iranian missiles and drone attacks on infrastructure, keeping the country occupied through an energetic winter. It did him no good in the south, where he was forced to withdraw from the right bank of the Dnieper, where he occupied the regional capital of Kherson.
The arrival of thousands of Russian soldiers, including prisoners and mobilized, resulted in the front lines being held with little change. Ukrainian forces, which managed to reduce occupied territory from 25% to about 15% since April, have failed to advance significantly or even make Kherson a safe city. To the east, in the Donetsk region, the Russians have been trying to take Bakhmut for months, as well as neighboring Soledar with particular focus in recent days.
The Polish president signals the transfer of the German Leopard tanks, which Kiev is asking for so much, provided that they are integrated into a coalition and with permission from Berlin.
This attack, according to some observers, exposed the rivalry between the regular army and the mercenaries of the Wagner group. The owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, considered the capture of Soledar an exclusive mission for his troops and published a photo of himself with soldiers, claiming to be in the mining town. The Kremlin was absent from the talk and warned against a premature declaration of victory, while Kiev denied that the photo was taken in Soledar and that its soldiers had withdrawn.
The recent appointments will not sit well with Prigozhin either: Surovikin has been praised by Wagner’s boss and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. And the man they had so publicly criticized, General Alexander Lapin, deposed as commander in the Eastern Region, has just been rehabilitated as Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces. “It’s an answer [a Prigozhin] under the motto “we are not leaving our own people behind,” a Russian military source told iStories.
On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky heard his counterparts from Poland, Andrzej Duda, and Lithuanian, Gitanas Nauseda, announce more military support. Speaking at a tripartite meeting in Lviv, Duda said his country is ready to send Leopard tanks made in Germany, but integrated into an international coalition – and especially with permission from Berlin. The Lithuanian said that Vilnius would send anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.
In an interview with AFP, Zelensky adviser Mikhailo Podolyak considered that with the new anti-aircraft systems on the way (the North American Patriot, the French Crotale and the Franco-Otalian SAMP/T), the country will be able to deploy 95% Russian missiles instead of the current 75%. And that, if partner countries send tanks (“250 to 350”) and missiles with a range of more than 100 kilometers, Ukraine will win the war in 2023. Otherwise, Podolyak predicts, the conflict will drag on for “decades”.
Source: DN
