Russia has replaced its military chief in Ukraine with a Kremlin insider, dashing calls from Moscow ultranationalists for a radical overhaul of the leadership overseeing the flagging invasion.
General Valery Gerasimov, who had served as Russia’s chief of general staff for over a decade, replaces General Sergei Surovikin as the head of the Russian military in Ukraine, the defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
General Surovikin is now one of General Gerasimov’s three deputies, according to the statement. General Gerasimov was among the architects of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and has remained in his post despite the mounting military disasters.
General Surovikin was only put in charge of the Russian forces in Ukraine in October, ending months of disjointed military structure that analysts said contributed to Russia’s disastrous battlefield performance.
His appointment came after the Ukrainians mounted a successful counteroffensive that drove the Russians out of much of the Kharkiv region.
General Surovikin was able to conduct an orderly retreat from the southern city of Kherson, the only Ukrainian provincial capital captured by Russian forces in nearly a year since the invasion. But he had struggled to make significant progress in the grinding offensive in the east of the country.
Oligarch citizenship
Ukraine has stripped Viktor Medvedchuk — a former oligarch and a close friend of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — of his Ukrainian citizenship, the government says, in an announcement that highlights Kyiv’s effort to excise the influence of prominent pro-Moscow politicians within the country.
Medvedchuk, a former deputy speaker in Ukraine’s Parliament and a one-time presidential adviser, was handed over to Russia in September as part of a prisoner swap.
The authorities in Ukraine had captured him in April after he fled house arrest while awaiting trial on treason charges. His influence in Ukraine was such that his name surfaced in the US. investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 American elections.
New York Times News Service
