RUSSIA DEMOTES CHIEF OF AIR FORCE
Surovikin connected to leader of Wagner mercenary group
Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, was removed from his post as the chief of Russia’s air force, in what appears to be Kremlin’s most public action against those connected to the armed rebellion of mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin in June.
The low-key crackdown in response to the mutiny, the most drastic threat to President Vladimir Putin in his 23-year rule, highlights the Russian leader’s cautious crisis management style. So far, Surovikin is the only senior official with ties to Prigozhin confirmed by Russian state media to have been demoted or otherwise punished in its aftermath.
Prigozhin was listed on the passenger roster of a private jet that crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, Russia’s aviation authority said.
Some Wagner fighters have relocated to Belarus, where officials have said the mercenaries are training Belarusian troops; others remain active in the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere in Africa, where they have helped prop up authoritarian leaders loyal to Moscow.
Prigozhin on Monday had released a brief video message online for the first time in the mutiny’s aftermath, hinting that he was in
Africa, even though the video recording’s timing and location were unclear. Dressed in fatigues and holding an assault rifle, he said that Wagner was “making Russia even greater, on all continents, and Africa even more free.”
Surovikin has not been seen in public since the rebellion, and his whereabouts has remained a mystery. In July, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the defense committee of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, said that Surovikin was “taking a
rest” in response to questions from a reporter.
On Wednesday, RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, said that “the ex-commander in chief of the Aerospace Forces of Russia, Sergei Surovikin has now been relieved of his post.” It said that Col. Gen. Viktor Afzalov, chief of the air force’s general staff, had been named as the acting commander.
“Surovikin was relieved of his post in connection with the transfer to another job. He is now on a short vacation,”
the RIA report added, citing a report from the Russian news outlet RBC.
Analysts have described Surovikin, called “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, as a brutally effective leader in a Russian military that even many Russian cheerleaders of the war have described as troubled by incompetence in its command structure. But his links to Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group, which took over a Russian city and began a march on Moscow in its brief mutiny, appeared to
precipitate his fall from grace.
U.S. officials believe that Surovikin had advance knowledge of Prigozhin’s rebellion. In the hours after the mutiny began, Russian authorities quickly released a video of the general calling on the Wagner fighters to stand down.
Rumors have been circulating among Russia’s military bloggers, some of whom have close ties to Russian officials and the military, that Surovikin had been under house arrest since the failed
mutiny.
The reports about Surovikin’s firing are “far from news for people in the know,” wrote Mikhail Zvinchuk, a popular pro-war Russian blogger who posts under the moniker Rybar on the messaging app Telegram. He added that Surovikin lost his job immediately after Prigozhin’s rebellion.
Surovikin was appointed to lead what Russian officials describe as its “special military operation” in Ukraine in October 2022 before being relieved of that job in January. In 2015, he commanded Russia’s forces during the country’s intervention in Syria, and he was the head of the Russian air force from 2017 onward.
In his three-month stint as the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Surovikin helped stabilize Russia’s flailing war effort. In the fall, he oversaw what analysts described as a professionally managed withdrawal of Russian troops from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, where they were nearly encircled last fall and cut off from supplies.
Surovikin’s replacement, Afzalov, has been chief of the air force’s general staff since 2018, according to Russian state media, having risen through the ranks. He was “directly involved in planning and organizing” the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.