Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, was authorised the additional position of “the Commander of the Joint Group of Forces”. Such a term is used in Russia for the actual leader of the Russian invasion forces waging war against Ukraine.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported about this.

In the official text, this appointment is explained by “increasing the level of leadership of the Special Military Operation” and “expanding the scale of the tasks to be solved during its implementation.”

General Sergey Surovikin, who was the commander of the invaders until now, was demoted to the level of deputy Commander of the Special Military Operation.

The day before, another rotation of generals took place in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. General Aleksandr Lapin was appointed Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

It is worth noting that both generals were the objects of media attacks by the owner of the Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin. He blamed them for the problems of the Russian army. In particular, Lapin was openly accused of retreating from Kharkiv region, and Gerasimov was accused of poorly supplying Wagner PMC with ammunition near Bakhmut.

https://youtu.be/C0mi96dt3gg

At the same time, Prigozhin and the propaganda network affiliated with them heroized Sergey Surovikin in every possible way.

During Surovikin’s command, the Russian army launched massive missile attacks on Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure. Starting from October 10, 2022, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out one and a half dozen mass missile attacks on Ukrainian power plants and transformer substations. At the same time, according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia has critically exhausted its arsenal of cruise missiles of various types.

Another achievement of Surovikin was the withdrawal of the Russian Armed Forces from the bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Surovikin organized the withdrawal of the invaders from the only regional center that they managed to capture in 2022 – Kherson. There were no significant changes to the front line in Donbas during the three months of Surovikin’s command (appointed on October 8, 2022).