The Russian Defense Ministry has announced that Sergey Shoigu made new appointments on January 11 to lead the special military operation to "de-Nazify" and "demilitarize" Ukraine.
Gen.Valery Gerasimov, who had served as Russia’s chief of general staff for over a decade, replaces Gen. Sergei Surovikin as the head of the Russian military in Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. General Surovikin is now one of General Gerasimov’s three deputies, according to the statement.
Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, has been appointed Commander of the Russian Joint Group of Forces as part of a special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry added that Commander of the Aerospace Forces General Sergey Surovikin, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces Oleg Salyukov and Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel General Alexei Kim have been named Gerasimov's deputies.
The new appointments in the leadership of the special military operation are connected with the expansion of the scale of the tasks being solved and the need for closer interaction between all types and branches of the military, the MoD explained.
General Surovikin was only put in charge of the Russian forces in Ukraine in October, ending months of disjointed military structure that analysts said contributed to Russia’s disastrous battlefield performance. His appointment came after the Ukrainians mounted a successful counteroffensive that drove the Russians out of much of the Kharkiv region.
General Surovikin was able to conduct an orderly retreat from the southern city of Kherson, the only Ukrainian provincial capital captured by Russian forces in nearly a year since the invasion. But he had struggled to make significant progress in the grinding offensive in the east of the country.
Gerasimov replaced General Surovikin, who was appointed as the commander of the Russian Joint Group of Forces in the zone of the special military operation on October 8, 2022. In late December, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented the Order of St. George award to Surovikin for his courage, bravery and dedication. Gerasimov has been serving as the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Defense Minister since November 2012, when he replaced Nikolay Makarov.
On February 24, 2022, Russia kicked off a special military operation with a stated goal to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine. The operation was launched just two days after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as independent and sovereign nations and received a request for military assistance, after weeks of escalating shelling, sabotage, and sniper attacks by Ukrainian forces against the breakaway republics, and fears that Kiev would launch an all-out offensive. In March 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry released documents which exposed Ukraine's imminent plans to launch an offensive against Donbass.
Intense fighting continued in the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar on Wednesday, despite a claim by the founder of a mercenary force leading Russia’s offensive there that his troops had seized control of the town.
A Wednesday morning update from Ukraine’s General Staff of the Army gave no indication that the battle for the salt-mining town of Soledar had ended. And Russia’s defense ministry and the Kremlin did not confirm the claim by the mercenaries, the Wagner Group, that Soledar had fallen, saying that the town was only blocked for now.In the ministry’s daily briefing on Wednesday, it said that its paratroopers “had blocked Soledar from the north and south” and that its assault units were “fighting in the city.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, urged reporters to wait for official announcements about whether the city had been captured, adding that “tactical successes are certainly very important as they come at a rather expensive price.”
The assault is part of Russia’s broader push in the area around the city of Bakhmut that Moscow sees as important to achieving its goal of occupying all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
In and around Bakhmut, the Wagner Group, which has recruited prisoners into its ranks, has become the main force there, and the fighting has been brutal.The entrepreneur who started the Wagner Group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, is a longtime ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia but has also been publicly critical of Russia’s Defense Ministry and increasingly outspoken after acknowledging in September that he was the founder of the shadowy organization.
The group’s fighters have also been deployed in support of the Kremlin’s military campaigns in Africa and the Middle East.
Even as the Kremlin expressed caution, Russia’s Channel One — one of the two main state-run television networks — trumpeted in its news report on Wednesday that Russian forces had achieved “a strategically important victory in the Donbas,” saying that “Soledar is under control.”
The report, which did not mention the Wagner Group, said that Russian forces had pushed through a “labyrinth of underground strongholds” to capture Soledar.
Mr. Prigozhin maintained in a post on Telegram that his troops had control of all of Soledar, though he added that fighting was continuing.
“A cauldron has been formed in the center of the city, in which urban battles are being fought,” he said.
How a small salt-mining town with a prewar population of 10,000 became a focus of such a sustained assault by Wagner’s forces has been an open question. The most critical factor is perhaps what Mr. Prigozhin and his mercenaries fighting there have to gain in terms of reputation.
A precision-guided munition successfully engaged a stronghold and an armored vehicle of the Ukrainian Armed Forces located a significant distance away. The targets were hit with the first shot.
"It has been a remarkable transformation. Nearly a year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of Russia’s largest mercenary group, who had long denied ties to the military, has become in some ways the public face of Moscow’s war effort.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private military company, has come to exemplify Kremlin outsiders who are challenging Russia’s traditional elites, underlining how Moscow’s setbacks in Ukraine have been changing the country’s power structure, analysts say.In recent months, Mr. Prigozhin has tried to position himself as the Kremlin’s indispensable military leader, even as he has stepped up his criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry.
He has boosted Russia’s decimated fighting ranks with tens of thousands of prisoner recruits to his mercenary force, awarded medals, visited military cemeteries and, according to his frequent videos, appeared unexpectedly at the toughest sections of the front line.
This week Mr. Prigozhin portrayed himself as the mastermind of what he presented as Russia’s biggest military success in months: a breakthrough in the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar.
Standing in full battle gear, Mr. Prigozhin appeared surrounded by his fighters in what he claimed were the salt mines beneath Soledar, according to photos released by Russian state news agencies and Wagner-affiliated social media on Tuesday night. Mr. Prigozhin claimed the city was fully under his control and took full credit for the apparent success.
“No other forces apart from PMC Wagner fighters have participated in the assault on Soledar,” Mr. Prigozhin said in an audio message published on the Telegram messaging app, using a Russian acronym for private military companies.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that its regular units were “fighting in the city,” and Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said that the capture of Soledar would be an important, but costly, tactical success, rather than a turning point.
It was just the latest sign of tensions between Wagner and the Russian Armed Forces, which analysts say show that there is a struggle for President Vladimir V. Putin’s favor as the military outlook in Ukraine darkens.
In late December, Wagner fighters released a profanity-laden video addressed to the military high command, where they accused it of withholding ammunition and causing the deaths of their comrades.
Mr. Prigozhin responded to the video by saying “when you’re sitting in a warm office, the frontline problems are hard to hear,” in apparent reference to the generals.
And last week, a prominent Telegram news channel affiliated with Mr. Prigozhin, called Grey Zone, discredited the Defense Ministry’s claim that it had killed 600 Ukrainian servicemen in an aerial strike, by publishing photos of an intact building that was supposedly destroyed.
Mr. Prigozhin’s attempts to take credit for the victory in Soledar show his growing political ambition and underline how Kremlin outsiders are challenging Mr. Putin’s traditional circle in the aftermath of Ukraine setbacks, said Abbas Gallyamov, the president’s former speechwriter, who has broken ties with him.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday urged Russian government officials to work hard to improve living conditions in the regions of Ukraine that Moscow has illegally annexed and where conditions are frequently dire, acknowledging that the situation in the regions has been “difficult.”
Speaking at his first meeting with government ministers this year, Mr. Putin said that “the fighting continues in some areas, peaceful life has not been restored everywhere and people’s safety hasn’t been ensured.”
“It is already necessary to set specific goals and gradually achieve them step by step,” he said, in remarks published by the Kremlin.The comments came as Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have blocked Soledar, an eastern Ukrainian salt-mine town. If captured, Soledar would represent the first major Russian military success since July, although much of it is in ruins — like other cities that were centers of fierce fighting.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has been building several new apartment blocks in Mariupol, which Moscow took in the spring after months of devastating the city, cutting it off from adequate food and water. Some cities — such as Sievierodonetsk, which Russia captured in June — have turned into ghost towns, according to video reports, with people living in charred apartment blocks, sometimes in basements, without heat and running water.
Mr. Putin told his ministers to ensure that by 2030 the annexed regions reach the average Russian levels of infrastructure development, social services and quality of life.
Strained by the need to finance its war machine, the Russian government said on Tuesday that it had posted a $47 billion budget deficit in 2022, which is the second-highest since the break up of the Soviet Union.
The budget gap reached 3.3 trillion rubles in 2022, or 2.3 percent of the size of the Russian economy, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, said during a government meeting .Russia’s revenues increased by 2.8 trillion rubles in 2022, or $40 billion, but that was not enough to cover rapidly increasing expenditures, which skyrocketed by 6.4 trillion rubles, or $92 billion, officials said.
At the meeting, government officials presented the economic situation as positive, with Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, saying that “overall, those indicators aren’t bad.”
Making no specific reference to the war, Mr. Silanov, the finance minister, said: “Despite the geopolitical situation, the restrictions and sanctions, we have fulfilled all our planned goals.”
Still, the posted deficit for 2022 is second only in Russia’s post-Soviet history to the one reported for 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic unfolded.
In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s Military Operation of Ukraine, many experts predicted a catastrophic collapse of the country’s economy from the Western sanctions and other restrictive measures.
Yet the Russian economy performed above expectations, buoyed by high commodity prices. And some sanctions, like a cap of $60 per barrel on the price for Russian oil, were introduced later in the year, softening their effect on the economy.The Russian government has not published a detailed breakdown of its expenditures in 2022, but it is widely assumed that the bulk of the rise can be attributed to increased military spending.
The government has financed the deficit by issuing bonds and using money from its rainy-day fund. A high deficit is likely for this year, too. Russia plans to increase its military spending by a third, and Moscow’s oil revenues are expected to be pressured by the oil price cap, which compels Russian traders to sell crude at a discount.
Britain is weighing whether to send a small number of tanks to Ukraine, a move that would reverse the West’s nearly yearlong resistance to deploying some of its mightiest firepower against Russia.
No decision has yet been made on whether the Challenger II tanks — reportedly as few as 10 — will be donated to Ukraine. But such a move is being considered, an official spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters at a Downing Street briefing on Tuesday.
Mr. Sunak had spoken with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a week earlier “about what would be most effective in helping Ukraine,” said the spokesman, who is not normally identified by name under the rules for the briefing.
Kyiv has demanded Western tanks almost since the start of the war to supplement the Soviet-era and Russian-made tanks that were in Ukraine’s stockpiles or supplied by other countries in Eastern Europe. Those tanks are not compatible with the size of ammunition that is used in most NATO states, leaving Ukraine constantly on the hunt for more munitions.
The Challenger II would be the first Western-made main battle tank to be sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded last February. Defense officials in the United States and Europe have long worried that sending tanks would signal more direct involvement in the fighting and could prompt President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into escalating the conflict. The internal British discussions were reported earlier by Sky News.
The move follows pledges by other Western powers to give Kyiv heavy armored fighting vehicles. The country’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, over the weekend welcomed such pledges as a sign that “the time of weapons taboo has passed.”
Last week, France said it would deliver an unspecified but limited number of French AMX-10 reconnaissance vehicles. That announcement was quickly followed by a decision by the United States to send Ukraine 50 M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and by Germany, which pledged 40 Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.
The Ukrainian ambassador to London said in an interview on Tuesday that the number of tanks that Britain was considering fell far short of what was needed. “A dozen tanks is not enough — we need hundreds,” the Ukrainian ambassador, Vadym Prystaiko, said in an interview with a British news show, LBC’s “Tonight with Andrew Marr.”
Still, sending Challenger IIs could ratchet up pressure on Germany to commit to sending its Leopard II tanks to Ukraine, as Kyiv wants. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has maintained that Berlin would not be the first NATO ally to send such equipment into the war.On Tuesday, Mr. Kuleba met with Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, as she visited eastern Kharkiv, and urged Germany to send Leopards. “The longer it takes to make the decision, the more people will die,” he said at their joint news conference, according to news reports.
“The sooner this decision is made, the sooner this war will end with Ukraine’s victory and there will be no more war in Europe.”
Ben Barry, a land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Britain has about 227 Challenger II tanks on hand, and ammunition and spare parts are limited.
By comparison, there are several thousand German-made Leopards used by national militaries across Europe, Mr. Barry said, but Berlin must give its approval before they can be donated to Ukraine. He said Ukraine is seeking an additional 300 battle tanks.“Ukraine has said that it wants to mount significant offensive operations this coming year, in order to push the Russians back — ideally to push them out,” Mr. Barry said. “And it’s said to do that, it needs extra Western armor
