Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu changed the military leadership in Ukraine, appointing Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, as head of the nation’s combined forces.
(Bloomberg) — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu changed the military leadership in Ukraine, appointing Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, as head of the nation’s combined forces.
General Sergei Surovikin, who had held the post since October, will become one of Gerasimov’s deputies, the Defense Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. Oleg Salyukov, chief of the land forces, and Alexei Kim, deputy head of the General Staff, will also serve as deputies.
Under Surovikin’s command, Russian troops withdrew from Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional center captured by Russia after the Feb. 24 invasion. Russia also unleashed waves of missile attacks targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The reshuffle is linked to an “expanded” scope of objectives in the Kremlin’s campaign, as well as the need for better coordination between branches of the military and improved management of forces, according to the Defense Ministry statement.
“This could make a process of taking military decisions faster, because Surovikin couldn’t give direct commands to the fleet or long-range aviation and had to go through Gerasimov,” said Yevgeny Buzhinsky, a retired Russian general and Moscow-based defense analyst. “Now Gerasimov himself will take all decisions.”
Russia has seen a number of shuffles in its military leadership since the invasion bogged down from the start, confounding President Vladimir Putin’s expectations of a quick and limited “special military operation.”
Asked about the latest change in Russia’s military hierarchy, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in Washington that “they sure have a lot of changes” as “they continue to try to overcome their own difficulties” in a war that she said Russia shouldn’t have started.
The news of Gerasimov’s appointment came on a day when Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian military-contracting company Wagner, claimed that his forces had taken Soledar in Donetsk region and surrounded a group of Ukrainian troops there. Ukrainian officials denied that Soledar has been taken.
Prigozhin has made common cause with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, with both at times questioning the skills of the military leadership, especially when Ukraine’s forces were actively retaking territory in September.
According to Buzhinsky the analyst, Gerasimov’s new role is also a signal to people like Kadyrov and Prigozhin “to know their place.” He said “Kadyrov and Prigozhin are respected people, they contribute a lot, but they shouldn’t decide on the way this operation goes.”
“Gerasimov’s track record in this war is very poor, Surovikin’s is not,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corp. and a former analyst of Russian military capabilities at the US Defense Department, said in an email. “I therefore must assume for now that this is a political decision and result of infighting in Moscow.”
–With assistance from Josh Wingrove.
(Updates with details and analyst and White House comments starting in fifth paragraph)
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