Following weeks of military failures, Moscow appoints General Sergey Surovikin as the sole commander of Ukraine’s faltering war.
Russia named a new general to command the Ukraine attack on Saturday, following a series of military defeats that prompted criticism of the army’s leadership.
The Russian defense ministry announced the appointment of General Sergey Surovikin as “commander of the Joint Grouping of Forces in the territories of the special military operation,” using the Kremlin’s euphemism for the offensive.
The decision was made after Moscow’s soldiers were pushed back by Kyiv in recent weeks in territories dubbed Russian “forever” by the Kremlin.
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Surovikin is 55 years old and was born in Novosibirsk, Siberia, according to the ministry’s website.
He has fought in hostilities in Tajikistan and Chechnya in the 1990s, as well as in Syria, where Moscow engaged in 2015 on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s administration.
According to a July defense ministry report, Surovikin formerly oversaw Ukraine’s “South” forces.
His predecessor’s name was never officially released, however some Russian media speculated that it was General Alexander Dvornikov, a Second Chechen War general and Russian commander in Syria.
The decision, made public for the first time by Moscow, comes after a string of catastrophic defeats for the Russian army in Ukraine.
In early September, a Ukrainian counter-offensive drove Russian soldiers out of much of the northeastern Kharkiv region, allowing Kyiv to recapture thousands of square kilometers of territory.
Russian troops also lost land in southern Kherson and the Lyman transport hub in eastern Ukraine.
Following the failures, there was increased criticism of the military leadership, even from the elite.
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