By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Russia has appointed a single Commander to lead all its forces in Ukraine nearly eight months after invasion, the country’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Sergei Surovikin, an Army General who also oversees Russia’s Air Force, previously led Russian forces in Syria. His appointment follows the reported sacking last week of the commanders of two of Russia’s five military regions.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a strong proponent of the war, openly accused Russia’s top military brass of covering up for a general who he said allowed Kyiv to retake a key city in eastern Ukraine last week.
Surovikin’s new role will involve galvanizing Russian troops after a slew of setbacks, including heavy losses of troops and equipment, and the forfeiture of thousands of square miles of occupied territory.
Sergei Surovikin will be the first person to be handed sole charge of the campaign since the invasion was launched in February.
Surovikin’s appointment comes on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to recruit hundreds of thousands of Russian men for the war. Putin’s order for approximately 300,000 Russians to join the fight in Ukraine is the first time since World War II that Moscow has drafted civilians into the military.
Recently, Putin declared that four Ukrainian regions now belonged to Russia. The Russian leader cited referendums, widely viewed as rigged and illegal by Western governments, held in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.
“The results are known, well known,” Putin said on Sept. 30. “There are four new regions of Russia,” referring to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Surovikin is leading the Russian forces after a huge explosion on a strategically important bridge linking Russia and the Crimea Peninsula brought down sections of road and caused fuel tanker wagons to catch fire on a train.
