Sergey Surovikin

He became commander of the 34th Motor Rifle Division at Yekaterinburg.

Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin (Серге́й Влади́мирович Сурови́кин; born 11 October 1966 in Novosibirsk, USSR) is a Russian army general who serves as head of the Coordinating Committee for Air Defence under the Council of Defence Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) since September 2023.

Surovikin was born in Novosibirsk, Soviet Union, on 11 October 1966.

He graduated from the Omsk Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1987.

He was assigned to a spetsnaz unit and served in the Soviet–Afghan War.

During the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Surovikin commanded a unit that killed three anti-coup demonstrators, for which he was detained for several months but never convicted.

He played an important role in the creation of the Main Directorate of the Military Police, a new organisation within the Russian army.

By August 1991, he was a captain and commander of the 1st Motor Rifle Battalion of the 15th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, part of the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division.

During the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow, Surovikin was ordered to send his battalion into the tunnel on the Garden Ring, where three anti-coup demonstrators were killed.

After the defeat of the coup, Surovikin was arrested and held under investigation for seven months.

The charges were dropped on 10 December because Boris Yeltsin concluded that Surovikin was only following orders.

He was promoted to the rank of major afterwards.

Surovikin attended the Frunze Military Academy.

He then became chief of staff of the 92nd Motor Rifle Regiment, chief of staff and commander of the 149th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment and chief of staff of the 201st Motor Rifle Division.

In September 1995, he was sentenced to a year of probation by the Moscow garrison's military court for illegally selling weapons.

The conviction was overturned after the investigation concluded that Surovikin had agreed to give a fellow student a pistol for use in a competition, unaware of its intended purpose.

In 1995, he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy.

Surovikin participated in the Tajikistani Civil War where he commanded a motor rifle battalion.

In 2002, he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff.

In March 2004, Surovikin was accused by Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Tsibizov of beating him up for leaving his post to participate in elections as an observer.

In April, division deputy commander for armaments Colonel Andrei Shtakal shot himself in the presence of Surovikin and the district deputy commander after being criticized by Surovikin.

In both cases, a military prosecutor found no evidence of guilt.

From June 2004, he led the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, permanently stationed in Chechnya to suppress the insurgency during the Second Chechen War.

After nine soldiers from the division died in the collapse of a farm building on 21 February 2005, an incident officially blamed on an insurgent-fired rocket-propelled grenade, Surovikin publicly promised to "destroy three insurgents for every soldier killed," in spite of the policy that required insurgents to be handed over to authorities.

Investigation by independent news organization Novaya Gazeta revealed that the deaths were caused by the accidental discharge of a grenade launcher by drunk soldiers.

In an April interview with army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, Surovikin complained that rules of engagement, especially the requirement to detain suspected militants instead of shooting them, hindered counter-insurgency operations, and that Chechen fighters were exploiting Russian soldiers' hesitation to fire on insurgents near civilians.

For his rhetoric, he gained a reputation in the press as a tough commander with an "iron fist."

In June, Surovikin ordered the Borozdinovskaya cleansing operation to "search for and detain insurgents," in which soldiers of the division's Vostok Battalion burned down houses, beat 87 civilians, killed one elderly man, and abducted eleven civilians.

Surovikin categorically denied that the abductions took place, but the company commander responsible was convicted of abuse of power.

Returning from Chechnya, Surovikin was appointed deputy commander of the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army in Voronezh in November 2005, rising to serve as its chief of staff from May 2006 and army commander from April 2008.

Surovikin commanded the Eastern Military District between 2013 and 2017, and in 2017 commanded the Russian group of forces in Syria.

He is accredited with turning the tide of the war in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's favour, and is also alleged to have been responsible for strikes on civilian targets during the Russian intervention.

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Surovikin was initially the commander of the Southern Grouping of Forces of the Russian Armed Forces.

On 8 October 2022, he became the commander of all Russian forces invading Ukraine, but was demoted to deputy commander and replaced by Valery Gerasimov in January 2023.

In late June 2023, rumors about his arrest emerged, according to unconfirmed reports following alleged involvement with the Wagner Group rebellion.

Surovikin's daughter claimed to be in contact with her father and insisted that he had not been detained.

On 10 September 2023, Surovikin was elected as head of the Coordinating Committee for Air Defence under the Council of Defence Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

His official visit to Algeria soon after dispelled all rumors about his whereabouts.

From 2017 to August 2023, Surovikin was the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces from 2017 until he was reportedly sacked by Vladimir Putin for an alleged involvement with the Wagner Group rebellion.

A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, Tajikistani Civil War, Second Chechen War, and the Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war, he was from October 2022 to January 2023 the commander of all Russian forces in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and deputy commander from January 2023 to August 2023.