Will Putin’s latest general escalate the war in Ukraine?

So, one granite-faced general has been replaced by another. The announcement that, after just three months in post, General Sergei Surovikin is being succeeded as overall commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov may sound like appointing a new captain for a hull-breached Titanic. But it is significant in what it says, not just about the war, but Putin’s relationship with his generals.

Surovikin becomes one of Gerasimov’s three deputies, in what is being sold not as a demotion but simply a reflection of the need for an ‘increase in the level of leadership’ because of the ‘amplified range of tasks’ and the need for closer cooperation between different military forces. Of course, it is.

The irony is that this is, in effect, a demotion for both men. Surovikin, a ruthlessly competent officer who actually seems to have done more than anyone to try and bring some professionalism to the Russian operation, may to an extent be being thrown to the wolves following the recent deaths of hundreds of soldiers in a Ukrainian missile strike at Makiivka.