General Sergei Surovikin, a veteran of Syria, was appointed the new Commander in Chief of Kremlin forces in Ukraine the same day the Crimean Bridge was sabotaged.
The massacre of civilians in Kiev and other cities in the country marked the bloody debut of the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin was promoted on Saturday, the same day the Kiev army destroyed the Crimean Bridge. Putin himself assured that Monday’s massacre came in response to the destruction of this infrastructure, although several military analysts believe such an operation should have been planned for weeks.
In any case, Surovikin was the one who executed her. Veteran of the military career, Putin’s new “butcher” plans to apply the terror techniques tested in previous scenarios. He commanded Russian forces in Syria in 2017 and later headed the Kremlin’s aerospace force, which combines air power and missiles. He returned to Syria between March and April 2019, a time when Russian planes destroyed the city of Aleppo. Also at that time chemical weapons were used in Ghouta and a series of bloody military operations were carried out in the region of Idlib. The NGO Humans Right Watch, in a 2020 report, puts him on a list of individuals responsible for possible war crimes in Idlib, along with other Russian and Syrian commanders.
Surovikin, who graduated from Omsk Higher Command School in 1987, is a professional soldier. He took part in Afghanistan and the Tajikistan civil war in the 1990s; in the second Chechen war in the 2000s, in which the Russians crushed Islamic insurgents; In Syria; and now in Ukraine.
He was born 55 years ago in Novosibirsk (Siberia) and made his first public appearance in 1991, during the attempted coup d’état after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Three civilians died after soldiers under their charge stormed a barricade. He was imprisoned, but suspended for six months thanks to an amnesty.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the ruthless Russian mercenary group Wagner, described him in recent days as “the most competent commander in the Russian army”. He was sanctioned by the European Union in February, just before the invasion, for his support of actions against “the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence” of Ukraine.
Until now, he’s been in charge of Russian forces on the southern front, where the invaders have captured large swaths of land, especially in Zaporizhia and Kherson, although Ukraine’s counter-offensive has been bearing fruit in recent weeks.
What is basically a prize in the form of internal promotion, however, can be a poisoned candy. Surovikin is the eighth commander of Russian forces so far in the war, the third in just a week since the collapse of the Russian army at Liman, on the eastern front, where the Ukrainians are rapidly regaining ground.
His predecessor, whose name has not been made public but is referred to by British intelligence as Alexander Dvornikov, is also a veteran of Chechnya and Afghanistan. However, harsh setbacks on the ground in recent weeks have prompted Putin to purge his commanders one after the other, likely to ward off domestic criticism.
We will have to see how events unfold, but what is certain is that, as in Syria, the anti-aircraft alarm in Ukraine will sound again. A terror strategy aimed at the population as old as war. As in any conflict, those who will pay will be civilians.
Source: La Verdad
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