Vladimir Putin has appointed General Sergey Surovikin to lead his military campaign in Ukraine.
(Picture: reuters)Vladmir Putin has promoted a new general to take charge of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine after a key strategic bridge in Crimea was damaged in an explosion.
General Sergey Surovikin will take total command of forces who have been largely forced into retreat by a Ukrainian counter attack.
It is believed the 18-mile long Kerch bridge in Crimea was targeted by Ukrainian special forces with the damage caused by explosives in a truck.
The attack on Saturday morning caused a section of the bridge, used to supply Russian troops in Ukraine by road and rail, to collapse into the water.
However, parts of the bridge have alearedy re-opened, according to the Russians who said three people died in the blast.
Surovikin, 55, is Moscow’s third senior military appointment in the space of a week as Putin attempts to re-boot his ‘special military’ operation which has led him lay claim to four Ukrainian regions with referendums dismissed as ‘sham’ by the West.
The change follows the reported sacking of the commanders of two of Russia’s five military regions this week, as its forces have suffered a series of dramatic reverses in northeastern and southern Ukraine in recent weeks.
Russia’s Defence Ministry did not reveal who Surovikin was replacing.
Surovikin, who is married and has three daughters, has led Russia’s Air and Space Forces since 2017.
He previously ran Russia’s campaign in Syria when Moscow intervened in 2015 to save Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Surovikin led Russian forces in Syria and was has been accused of instigating the bombardement which destroyed much of the city of Aleppo. He was promoted to General of the Army in 2021 and over this summer was placed in charge of troops in southern Ukraine.
He has been slapped with sanctions by the EU for being “responsible for actively supporting and implementing actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.”
Surovikin’s appointment comes as dissent over Putin’s running of the war has been hit by criticism from senior military figures and even from the President’s inner circle, according to intelligence reports in the US. The Washington Post reported that a Kremlin insider had directly confronted Putin over the flagging fortunes of the Russian war machine.
Meanwhile British intelligence officials have said that “diverse actors within the Russian system” have become critical of the military leadership following battlefield setbacks.
The MoD said: “Following continued battlefield setbacks for Russia over the last two weeks, increasingly diverse actors within the Russian system have joined voices in criticism of the Russian MoD leadership.
Critics have included Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, state-approved TV presenters and pop star and a “vocal community of ultra-nationalistic military bloggers”, they added.
“Kadyrov and Prigozhin are likely being perceived as informal figure heads of a ‘pro-war’ bloc whose criticism hinges on arguments for greater state commitment and willingness to escalate.
“Both likely achieve some credibility based on the significant deployment of both Chechen and Wagner combat units on the ground.
“The criticism remains focused at the military high command rather than senior political leadership, but it does represent a trend of public voicing of dissent against the Russian establishment which is being at least partly tolerated and which will likely be hard to reverse.
The Ministry of Defence said Kyiv had captured and repurposed at least 440 Russian battle tanks and 650 armoured vehicles. The equipment seized Russian themselves have inadvertently become one of the main sources of military hardware for the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Russia has claimed as Russian the territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson even though it does not have military control over them in entirety and is losing ground and falling back to new defensive lines.
