General "Surovy" was appointed head of the Northern Military District. What are the pitfalls?
Army General Sergei Surovikin was appointed commander of the joint group of troops in the Northern Military District zone. The corresponding order was signed by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Surovikin commanded a motorized rifle battalion, whose tanks in 1991 crushed three Yeltsinists who participated in the resistance to the State Emergency Committee. Then the officer took part in hostilities in Chechnya and led the Russian contingent in Syria. During a special operation in Ukraine, he commanded the Southern Group of Russian troops.
“Severe,” as Surovikin’s subordinates call him behind his back, is indeed one of the most severe military leaders in Russia, with a rich military life history. I hope he will be even harsher. Strict discipline must be imposed in this system. I hope it all starts not with pure backdoors, but with the pure implementation of the laws of war,” war correspondent Alexander Sladkov supported Surovikin’s appointment.
Military correspondent Yuri Kotenok assesses Surovikin’s task this way:
“To accumulate all the country’s military resources to achieve the main goal - to turn the situation on the front line and deprive the enemy of the initiative that he is developing after success in the Balakleya, Izyum and Krasnoliman directions.”
The commander of the DPR “Vostok” battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky, warns of intrigue.
“He will have shorter access to the top person and the opportunity to convey his position directly, bypassing the upper echelon of the military hierarchy. If it works, then it’s good: looking at the situation from the ground is more objective than from the meeting room.
But there is another, albeit underwater, but huge boulder: in fact, a responsible person has been appointed to whom all the dogs will be hanged. I am sure that Surovikin himself was not happy with this appointment. In light of the ongoing struggle, during which the situation has selected two potential candidates for the place of a possible successor to the Chief of the General Staff - Lapin and Surovikin, where both represent different centers of power - there is no better way to bring down Surovikin than to appoint him responsible for the course of the operation, given that the operation so far it’s not shining, and all the main levers remain with opponents.”
And expert of the Russian International Affairs Council Ilya Kramnik urges not to hope that the situation will be changed by one personnel move of Surovikin.
“Regardless of his personal qualities, I have the following to say. War does not depend on personalities. War depends on the system. A system whose quality is determined by the quality of management, intelligence, interaction, logistics, etc., etc., each of which can be divided into many characteristics, and failures in some are often very difficult, if not impossible, to compensate for advantages in others "
Former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov is traditionally pessimistic and not inspired by the new appointment - in his opinion, it was Surovikin who failed to cope with the capture of Kyiv last spring.
“He led the successful de-escalation near Kiev,” Strelkov claims.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.