Russian Federation (RF) army leadership appointed a new general to oversee the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine, for the first time unifying all invading units under a single commander, Ukrainian and international news reports on Saturday, April 9, said.
Aleksandr Dvornikov was the senior officer commanding of RF forces intervening in Syria in September 2015. Prior to his latest appointment, he had been boss of the RF’s Southern Military District. Following the RF’s 24 Feb. invasion of Ukraine, Dvornikov’s troops scored moderate successes in the war’s southern sector by overrunning the cities Kherson and Melitopol, but, failing to capture the major cities Mykolaiv and Kriviy Rih.
Ukrainian and international news outlets like BBC, and Ukrainian military information web platforms like InformNapalm said the main reason for Dvornikov’s promotion to command of all RF troops in Ukraine was a Kremlin view that failure to conquer the country in the first days of the invasion was due to lack of centralized command, and poor coordination between attacking armies. A possible second reason was relatively poor performance by RF forces attacking in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv sectors, where fierce UAF defenses used massed artillery and anti-tank weapons to bring the Kremlin’s forces to a dead halt, at times inflicting crippling losses.
Dvornikov’s appointment came against a background of Kremlin declarations that it never intended to capture northern cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, and that Moscow’s main territorial objectives in Ukraine are total control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Western and Ukrainian intelligence the last week have predicted the Kremlin is planning a major offensive in the eastern Donbas region, with the goal of forcing Ukraine to surrender or seek dictated peace terms, in time for the World War Two Victory holiday, celebrated in Russia on May 9.
According to western and Ukrainian intelligence analyses, RF forces in the Donbas territories are currently are making limited local attacks and bombarding civilian homes and businesses, while combat formations behind RF lines are trying to recover from heavy personnel and equipment losses suffered in the first month of the war. UAF forces are digging in and receiving reinforcements, the reports said.
