General Armageddon: the rise of Sergey Surovikin
When Vladimir Putin appointed Sergey Surovikin in October 2022 as Russia’s top commander in the war against Ukraine, it was clear that the Russian leader was seeking to reprise the brutality of his war against the Chechens that had raged more than a decade earlier. Surovikin’s rise through the ranks had been built on indifference to human life, as well as on a flouting of whatever rules he confronted. He therefore was the perfect man for Putin to call upon to energize the flagging “special military operation” in Ukraine.
While Surovikin was serving as a young captain commanding the First Rifle Battalion during the attempted coup of 1991, anti-coup protesters blocked the path of his unit’s vehicles. Surovikin ordered that the vehicles drive on, which resulted in the death of three protesters. Surovikin was arrested after the coup failed, but after seven months all charges against him were dropped. The then Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, accepted his claim that he was simply following orders—a phrase evoking the post-war protestations of Nazi SS officers.
Four years after the attempted coup, while Surovikin was attending the Frunze Academy, a military court sentenced him to a year’s probation for illegally selling a pistol to a classmate. Surovikin claimed he was “set up”, having been led to believe the pistol would be used for a competition. Subsequent to an investigation the sentence was overturned and the penalty expunged from his record.
In March 2004, a subordinate officer accused Surovikin of beating him. The following month one of Surovikin’s deputies, Viktor Chibizov, shot himself in Surovikin’s presence. In both cases, Surovikin once again escaped censure and punishment, on the grounds that there was no evidence of his guilt—even though Chibizov shot himself just after Surovikin had verbally castigated him.
Two months after the Chibizov incident, Surovikin was dispatched to Chechnya, where he commanded a Motorised Rifle Division. There he began to seal his reputation for brutality, most notably by ordering reprisals against civilians. Not surprisingly, human rights groups considered him a war criminal.
Thirteen years later, Surovikin reprised his modus operandi in Syria, having been put in command of Russian forces operating in that country in June 2017, primarily against the anti-Assad rebels. Once again, as they had done in Chechnya, his forces bombed civilian centres and non-combatant infrastructure. By the end of 2017, his brutal tactics had enabled the Syrian government to regain over half the territory it had lost to the rebels. It was no surprise that his performance earned him the sobriquet “General Armageddon”.
It was Russia’s failure to decapitate the Ukrainian government in February 2022, and the Russian military’s ongoing operational failures, logistical shortcomings and poor morale, as well as Ukraine’s subsequent successful efforts to recapture territory lost at the outset of the war, that led to another promotion for Surovikin. He had previously commanded Russian forces in southern Ukraine, which saw relatively more success than Russian operations elsewhere in the country. But with the war going poorly, seemingly on the verge of being lost, Vladimir Putin called upon Surovikin to take command of all Russian forces in Ukraine.
Surovikin initially did not disappoint. Shortly after he took command, he launched a campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions of Ukrainian civilians without power or running water for extended periods in the depths of winter. Yet the tactics that had succeeded in the brutal repression of counterinsurgents in Chechnya and Syria were not effective against Ukraine’s determined professional military, supported by arms and training that the United States and many of its allies continued to provide, and that also were backed up by territorial forces protecting their homes. Indeed, Surovikin’s operations involving the targeting of civilian facilities — such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure and residential buildings — only stiffened Ukrainian spines.
Moreover, apart from his brief command in southern Ukraine, Surovikin had not truly commanded a combined arms force in combat. Yet it was, and remains, the Russian inability to conduct successful combined arms operations that has been a major contributing factor in its shortcomings on the battlefield. Additionally, Surovikin’s attempts to employ psychological warfare, such as his assertion on October 18 that Ukraine was planning to strike the Kakhova Power Plant and flood the area along the Dniepro River, also failed to impress either the Ukrainian military or Ukrainian civilians. Finally, Surovikin’s forces were forced to withdraw from the southern city of Kherson — a major success for the Ukrainians and a humiliation for Moscow.
It is noteworthy that Vladimir Putin appeared less than enthusiastic when he announced Surovikin’s new command last October. And just a few months later, in January 2023, Putin demoted him, placing him under the command of Valery Gerasimov, the Russian military’s Chief of the General Staff. Ironically, Surovikin previously had been mentioned as Gerasimov’s likely successor.
Given his background, Surovikin may not be taking his demotion lightly. He may well be licking his wounds and contemplating a way to get back at Putin. Although the Russian leader seems invulnerable at present, that may not continue to be the case if the much anticipated Russian spring military offensive against Ukraine sputters and peters out. Vladimir Putin surely must know his fate depends on the outcome of the war in Ukraine and that Russia’s failure in that war will put him on very thin ice. Should that be the case, it could well result in Surovikin’s joining Putin’s rivals and enemies, to ensure that the Russian President falls through its cracks.
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