GENERAL ARMAGEDDON’: Who Is The Brutal Russian Commander Charged With Winning The Ukraine War?
Russia’s devastating airstrikes across Ukraine on Monday had all the hallmarks of General Sergei Surovikin, the notoriously brutal commander who has now taken charge of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Known as General Armageddon, Surovikin oversaw the destruction of Aleppo, having previously fought in the 1990s conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya.
Surovikin, 55, was appointed on Saturday, after Moscow’s forces were pushed back by Kyiv in recent weeks in a series of embarrassing setbacks, and hours after the blast on the Kerch Bridge joining Russian-occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland.
The Russian defence ministry said General Surovikin had been appointed ‘commander of the Joint Grouping of Forces in the areas of the special military operation’, using the Kremlin’s term for Putin’s on-going invasion.
As revenge for the bridge explosion, Russia on Monday unleashed 83 missiles at what it claimed were military, energy and communications networks in Ukraine.
It was Russia’s largest single barrage since the opening day of the war.
In the aftermath of attack, Surovikin’s name was at the top of the list of suspects likely to have ordered the brutal strikes which bore all his hallmarks.
The general was born in 1966 in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. In the 1980s, he served in the Soviet Union’s doomed war in Afghanistan.
He has twice been in jail after soldiers under his command killed demonstrators in Moscow during the August 1991 coup that preceded the end of the Soviet Union and its repression.
A tank division under his command broke through a line of protesters in central Moscow, crushing three people to death. He spent several months in prison, and was later released without trial when officials ruled he was following orders.
Commanding troops in Chechnya he was remembered for stating his intent to kill three insurgents for each of his soldiers who they killed.
He also commanded Putin’s troops in Syria culminating in his award of the Kremlin’s highest medal – Hero of Russia.
Most notably, he oversaw the 2016 destruction of Aleppo, when Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime retook the city with the support of Russian airstrikes.
Human rights groups have accused him of being complicit in the indiscriminate bombing, using barrel bombs, and of overseeing chemical weapon attacks.
Until being appointed on Saturday, Surovikin led the ‘South’ forces in Ukraine, according to a defence ministry report in July. Experts have suggested he was appointed by Putin to take total command in Ukraine because of his ruthlessness.
While he has typically commanded infantry, he has also commanded Russian air force. This could be another reason behind Putin’s appointment, as Russia’s army, air force and navy have been disjointed so far in the war in Ukraine.
‘Surovikin knows how to fight with bombers and missiles – that’s what he does,’ General Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, said in June.
Speaking to Sky News, Military analyst Forbes McKenzie, head of McKenzie Intelligence, said Surovikin’s reputation the reason for his appointment.’