Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) toasts with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev next to Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian troops in Syria, after a ceremony to bestow state awards on military personnel who fought in Syria, on the Kremlin in Moscow on December 28, 2017. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / POOL / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Kirill Kudryavtsev | Afp | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – Russia has appointed a recent commander to guide all of its forces in Ukraine because the Kremlin’s war marches into its eighth month.
Sergei Surovikin, an Army general who also oversees Russia’s air force, previously led Russian forces in Syria. His recent role will involve galvanizing Russian troops after a slew of setbacks, including heavy losses of troops and equipment, and the forfeiture of hundreds of square miles of occupied territory.
Surovikin’s appointment comes on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to conscript tons of of hundreds of Russian men for the war. Putin’s order for about 300,000 Russians to hitch the fight in Ukraine is the primary time since World War II that Moscow has drafted civilians into the military.
The Kremlin’s decision to impose a partial draft was triggered partially by a series of stunning Ukrainian advances in recent weeks.
Last week, Putin declared that 4 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 outcomes are known, well-known,” Putin said on Sept. 30. “There are 4 recent regions of Russia,” referring to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
On the heels of Putin’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he’ll submit an “accelerated” application for his country to hitch the NATO military alliance.
Equipped with an arsenal of Western weapons, Ukrainian forces have retaken vast swaths of territory that had been occupied by Russian forces for the reason that early days of the war. Their battlefield successes have dented the status of the Kremlin’s mighty war machine.
But as Ukraine fights to retake land one village at a time, the associated fee to civilians has been enormous.
Thus far, the U.N. estimates that Russia’s invasion has claimed greater than 6,000 civilian lives and led to greater than 8,600 injuries. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights adds that the death toll in Ukraine is probably going higher.
