According to a Telegram message from the Russian Defense Ministry, “General of the Army Sergei Sorovikin has been named commander of the joint group of forces in the Special Military Operation Zone” in Ukraine.
Surovikin, 55, had previously taken part in the second Chechen Conflict at the beginning of the third millennium, the civil war in Tajikistan in the 1990s, and the Russian intervention in Syria, which started in 2015.
According to a Russian Defense Ministry report from July, he previously oversaw the “South” force formation in Ukraine.
The name of his predecessor was never made public, although according to Russian media, he was General Alexander Dvornikov, who later took part in the second Chechen War and oversaw Russian forces in Syria in 2015 and 2016.
This unusual decision from Moscow follows a string of disastrous military operations by the Russian army in Ukraine, where the Russian forces were driven out of the northeastern Kharkiv region in early September following a Ukrainian counterattack that gave Kiev back control over thousands of square kilometres of its territory.
Additionally, the Russian forces suffered a 500 square kilometre loss of territory in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine and struggled mightily to escape the blockade surrounding the important town of Lyman, which is now in Ukrainian hands.
The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov lambasted the military leadership after these failures created discontent among the Russian elite, and legislative official Andrei Kartapolov publicly urged the army to “stop lying.”
The explosion that partially destroyed the Crimean bridge, a critical artery for the transport of supplies to the peninsula Moscow has annexed and to its forces in Ukraine, occurred at the same time as the commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine was replaced.
A new military leader will oversee Russia’s combat operations in Ukraine
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