'General Armageddon': Syrians recall ruthlessness of Russia's new Ukraine commander

The newly appointed general who is leading Russia's Ukraine offensive has a reputation for ruthlessness that has earned him the nickname "General Armageddon".

But before he assumed his new role on October 8, Gen. Sergey Surovikin had earned another moniker, 'Butcher of Syria', for his actions in that country and had been sanctioned for violations committed during the 2019 Idlib offensive.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, Surovikin, 55, was born in Siberia's Novosibirsk and has combat experience in the 1990s conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya, AFP reported.

More recently, he served on and off between 2017 and 2020 in Syria, where Moscow intervened in 2015 on the side of the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, and he went on to lead the "South" forces in Ukraine.

The name of his predecessor was never officially revealed, but some Russian media said it was Gen. Alexander Dvornikov -- also a commander in Syria.

Surovikin's appointment was announced after Russian forces in Ukraine suffered a series of military setbacks and crushing defeats, which led to growing criticism of the military leadership and their lies about the conflict's progress.

The Kremlin's appointment, unusually made public, appears to indicate that Russia is leaning into a no-holds-barred approach to the conflict it initiated and has been conscripting its people to serve, analysts said.

Many in Syria are familiar with the tactic.

'Butcher of Syria'

In Syria, as commander of Russia's aerospace unit, Surovikin oversaw the obliteration from the air of much of the city of Aleppo, the BBC reported.

Under his command, Russian forces were involved in covering for the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons, Middle East Institute Syria Programme director Charles Lister said.

They witnessed the nerve agent sarin being loaded onto Syrian aircraft minutes before a deadly chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun, in which more than 80 people died, Lister told the BBC.

Russia later sought to stymie efforts to hold the Syrian regime to account for its use of chemical weapons by obstructing independent investigations and undermining the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to Lister, Surovikin has an "absolutely unforgiving attitude to the enemy" and makes no distinction between combatants and civilians.

"He is being called the 'Butcher of Syria', but every general that took that post was a butcher of Syria," Conflict Intelligence Team researcher Kirill Mikhailov told the Washington Post.

"It's a job you take because killing people and making their life miserable is what the Russian air force can do best," he said.

"Surovikin has a reputation for total ruthlessness," according to "Russia's Military Strategy and Doctrine", a book published by the Jamestown Foundation in February 2019.

He spent some six months in prison after solders under his command killed three anti-Communist protesters in the streets of Moscow in 1991, and in 1995, received a suspended sentence for illegal arms trade.

In 2004, he was accused of physically assaulting subordinate officers.

Yet "Surovikin's readiness to vigorously execute any orders trounced any potential questions about his checkered curriculum vitae".

Brutal assault on Idlib

In an October 2020 report, "Targeting life in Idlib", Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed the Syrian and Russian strikes targeting civilian infrastructure in Idlib.

In April 2019, the report says, the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia, launched a major military offensive to retake Idlib province and surrounding areas.

"Over the next 11 months, the Syrian-Russian alliance showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly three million civilians in the area, many of them people displaced by the fighting in other parts of the country," it said.

"The alliance launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war, striking homes, schools, healthcare facilities, and markets – the places where people live, work, and study."

"They used cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, and improvised 'barrel bombs' in populated areas to deadly effect," the report said.

"The attacks killed at least 1,600 civilians, destroyed and damaged civilian infrastructure, and forced the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people."

Surovikin is named in the report, on a list of commanders who may bear command responsibility for violations during the 2019-2020 Idlib offensive.

Wagner Group crony

During his time in Syria, Surovikin developed a good working relationship with the Wagner mercenary group, Gleb Irisov, a former air force lieutenant who worked with Surovikin up to 2020, told the Guardian.

His new appointment to lead Russia's Ukraine offensive has been welcomed by Wagner Group founder and financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, who openly admitted his role in the formation of the private military company (PMC) for the first time in late September.

"Of course I know him," Prigozhin wrote of Surovikin on the webpage of the Concord company, which he runs, Russian media outlet Live 24 reported.

He went on to describe Surovikin as "a legendary person" who was "born to faithfully serve the Motherland" and is "the most competent commander in the Russian army", while taking a jab at the general's predecessors.

Surovikin "can act in the current situation on the basis of the opportunities that he has and relying on the situation that was handed over to him by his predecessors, and it was handed over, to put it mildly, not in the best possible way", he noted.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov also welcomed Surovikin's appointment and the accompanying uptick in violence in Ukraine.

"Now, I am 100% satisfied with the operation," Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel on October 10, referring to the shelling of Kyiv, where at least six civilians were killed, the Guardian reported.

The Wagner Group and the PMCs it controls have a violent track record in Syria, where they have also sought to gain control of Syria's mineral wealth after establishing control of certain key areas, such as Palmyra.

In August 2017, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, the Syrian regime advanced on the central town of Akerbat and surrounded it.

Surovikin, then head of Russia's military in Syria, said controlling Akerbat would allow the Syrian regime to take full control of the oil and gas fields north of Palmyra -- which have since come largely under Russian control.