Gen. Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine has been removed from his post as chief of the Russian Air Force, in what appears to be the Kremlin’s most public action yet against those connected to the armed rebellion of mercenary warlord Yevgeny V. Prigozhin in June.
The low-key crackdown in response to the uprising, the most serious threat to President Vladimir V. Putin in his 23-year rule, highlights the Russian leader’s cautious crisis management style. So far, General Surovikin is the only senior official with ties to Mr. Prigozhin whom Russian state media has confirmed has been demoted or otherwise punished in the aftermath.
Mr. Prigozhin appears to have escaped harsh punishment, suggesting the Kremlin still sees him as useful – though many observers predicted his betrayal of Mr. Putin is equivalent to a death sentence.
Some Wagner fighters have moved to Belarus, where officials say 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.
Mr. Prigozhin on Monday released a short video message online for the first time since the uprising, indicating he was in Africa, although the time and location of the video recording were unclear. Dressed in fatigues and holding an assault rifle, he said that “Wagner is making Russia bigger, on all continents, and Africa more free.”
General Surovikin has not been seen in public since the rebellion and his whereabouts remain a mystery. In July, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the defense committee of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, said that General Surovikin was “resting” in response to a reporter’s questions.
On Wednesday, RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, said that “the former commander in chief of the Aerospace Forces of Russia, Sergei Surovikin has now been removed from his post.” It said that Col. Gen. Viktor Afzalov, chief of the general staff of the air force, was named as acting commander.
.
“Surovikin was relieved of his post in connection with a transfer to another job. He is on a short vacation,” the RIA report added, citing a report from Russian news outlet RBC.
Analysts have described General Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, as a ruthlessly effective leader in a Russian military that even many Russian cheerleaders of the war described as troubled by incompetence in its command structure. But his links to Mr. Wagner’s mercenary group. Prigozhin, who took over a Russian city and began marching on Moscow during its brief uprising, appears to have precipitated his fall from grace.
US officials believe that General Surovikin had advance knowledge of Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion. In the hours after the uprising began, Russian authorities quickly released a video of the general calling on Wagner fighters to stand down.
Rumors have been circulating among Russian military bloggers, some of whom have close ties to Russian officials and the military, that General Surovikin has been under house arrest since the failed coup.
Reports about the firing of General Surovikin were “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 General Surovikin lost his job immediately after Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion.
General Surovikin was appointed to lead what Russian officials describe as its “special military operation” in Ukraine in October 2022 before being removed from that job in January. In 2015, he led the Russian forces during the country’s intervention in Syria, and he was the head of the Russian air force from 2017.
During his three-month tenure as commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, General Surovikin helped stabilize Russia’s flagging 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 besieged last fall and cut off from supplies.
He is also believed to have led the construction of Russia’s formidable network of defensive lines in the territory it occupies in Ukraine, challenging Kyiv’s counter-offensive.
General Surovikin’s replacement, General Afzalov, has been the chief of the general staff of the Air Force since 2018, according to Russian state media, who rose through the ranks. He was “directly involved in planning and organizing” the mass invasion of Ukraine, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
General Afzalov previously served as the interim commander of the Russian air force while General Surovikin led the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. Suspicions that General Afzalov had replaced General Surovikin were raised in July, when the former was shown on official video footage delivering an air force report to General Valery V. Gerasimov, Russia’s top military officer.
