The Kremlin has appointed its chief of staff to head the “special military operation” in Ukraine. His predecessor lasted three months, dismissed after recent failures and fiascos on the front.
By Benjamin Quenelle
Correspondent in Moscow
NOTnew movements of epaulettes at the head of the Russian army: interlocutor close to Vladimir Putin, covered with medals awarded over the years and exploits by the president, the chief of the Defense staff, Valéri Guerassimov, 67 years old , was appointed “commander of the combined grouping of troops” deployed in Ukraine. Translation: while the head of the Kremlin for the first time, at the end of last year, used the word “war”, this general at the top of the military hierarchy for ten years now takes the direction of the “special operation” , according to the understatement of the Kremlin increasingly undermined by the reality of the front. He replaces Sergei Surovikin, barely three months after the appointment of this veteran of the worst wars in Moscow who, nicknamed “General Armageddon”, was the architect of a massive bombing campaign in Ukraine.
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