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Sergei Vladimirovich Surovikin

General Sergey Surovikin, deputy commander of the joint group of Russian troops in Ukraine, was detained as part of a “cleansing” of supporters of Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, which the Kremlin staged after the mercenary rebellion, Financial Times sources said. Two sources close to the General Staff and the FSB told Important Stories that Surovikin was interrogated but then released.

Surovikin was dismissed as head of the country’s aerospace forces 23 August 2023, the same day his collaborator Yevgeniy Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash. The former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine had not been seen in public since the mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in June 2023. The Russian-language RBC media outlet reported “Army General Sergei Surovikin had been relieved of his post in connection with the transition to another job and is at the disposal of (the Ministry of Defence)”.

“Ex-chief of the Russian Air and Space Forces Sergei Surovikin has now been relieved of his post, while Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov, head of the Main Staff of the Air Force, is temporarily acting as commander-in-chief of the Air Force,” RIA Novosti reported. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russian military bloggers claimed the latest news on Surovikin’s fate was neither new, nor a surprise. “Surovikin’s alleged dismissal is not new and does not change anything because Russian authorities removed Surovikin from power immediately after Prigozhin’s June 24 rebellion,” the bloggers said, according to ISW.

Some publications claimed that Surovikin was arrested due his alleged involvement with Prigozhin's rebellion. The Kremlin did not comment whether General Sergei Surovikin had been taken into custody and redirected questions to the Ministry of Defense. The Kremlin said it could not provide information about Russian General Sergei Surovikin, who had not been seen in public since Wagner mercenary group head Yevgeny Prigozhin led a rebellion against the Russian military.

The New York Times reported, citing US intelligence, that Surovikin was aware of the plans of Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC to commit a mutiny. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Surovikin's NYT information, called these data speculation.

The Financial Times (FT) reported the detention of Surovikin was probably connected with the failed rebellion of the Wagner PMC, about the preparation of which the general was allegedly aware. According to the FT, it was not yet clear whether the deputy commander had been charged with conspiracy or detained for questioning. Bloomberg later reported that Surovikin was interrogated for several days by military prosecutors about his ties to Prigozhin. A source familiar with the agency said that the general is being held “in one place,” but he is not in jail.

"Voenkor" [military correspondent] Vladimir Romanov said that Surovikin "was taken to Lefortovo". Moreover, according to him, this allegedly happened on June 25 - the day after the rebellion. The arrest of the general on the evening of June 28, citing sources close to the Russian Defense Ministry, was also reported by The Moscow Times. “Apparently, he [Surovikin] chose the side [of Prigozhin during the rebellion], and they grabbed him by the balls,” said one of the interlocutors of the publication.

Mark Galeotti, a political scientist at University College London who specializes in Russian security affairs, wrote on Twitter on June 28 that claims that Surovikin, whom he said was "not a nice man but he is a dangerously competent general," knew in advance of Prigozhin's planned revolt might have been an "info op" by Surovikin's opponents, since one source was "The New York Times, which often feels like the US intel community's PR agency". Galeotti wrote "Surovikin quickly issued a public appeal to Wagner mercs to stand down, making a clear statement that — contrary to previous suspicions he was close to Prigozhin — he was loyal to the Kremlin," But Surovikin's video statement looked like a hostage video, taped under dureees, and Surovikin was uncharacteristically unshaven, and dressed in a plain uniform devoid of insignia.

"Surovikin was insanely hyped up as General Armageddon — finally the one, the big guy made of dead soldiers' flesh and with the voice of thunder, the hammerhead with balls of osmium, the one to finally beat the shit out of those dirty hohols, the Field Marshal of True Russian Victory, the death messiah blessed to parade through the ruins of downtown Kyiv. Almost immediately, Surovikin is the one to cede Kheron to Ukraine and lose the position two months after the appointment. Then he is the one to be absolutely forgotten. Now he's rumored to have been arrested in connection with the Wagner rebellion." Illia Ponomarenko, defense reporter with the Kyiv Independent. noted 28 June 2023.

The media, including Western ones, report that Surovikin was nicknamed General Armageddon. The British edition of the Guardian wrote that Surovikin gained a reputation as a ruthless commander back in 2004, due to the fact that a colonel who served under him in Yekaterinburg committed suicide after talking with the general "in a raised voice." This incident was reported by Kommersant; According to the publication, the officer took his own life after talking with Surovikin at headquarters, in front of his colleagues. The Guardian claims that the nickname General Armageddon appeared at that time.

The military observer of Komsomolskaya Pravda Viktor Baranets, in turn, wrote that the commander received the nickname after serving in Syria. One of the important episodes of the Syrian campaign was the capture of Sukhna and Deir ez-Zor in 2017, where Syrian forces have been fighting with militants since 2011. This was done after numerous attacks by cruise missiles and the use of bombers.

In 2012, he became the only military man in the list of the 100 most authoritative people in Russia, compiled by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) and the Russian Reporter magazine. t Surovikin was among Russia’s most capable commanders and was largely credited with stabilizing Russian lines in the wake of successful Ukrainian offensives. While the rationale for hsi replacemement in January 2023 was unclear, some observers speculated that the demotion of Surovikin demonstrated the unrealistic battlefield expectations of Russian political decisionmakers, due in part to an the disconnect between Russian officers on the ground and the ability to convey accurate and realistic information on the conflict to their superiors.

There is very little reliable information about Surovikin's childhood and youth. He was born in Novosibirsk in 1966, studied at school No. 88 (now - gymnasium No. 4). His mother planned to send him to the Suvorov School, but in the end he went to the physics and mathematics school, from which he graduated with a gold medal. Surovikin's father was a pilot, he died.

Surovikin served in the armed forces since 1983. In the late 1980s, he served as part of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan. He commanded a motorized rifle platoon, a company in the Second Guards Motorized Rifle Taman Division stationed in the Moscow region. In 1987 he graduated with a gold medal from the Omsk Higher Combined Arms Command School imeni M.I. Frunze. In 1989, during the exercises, Surovikin movee a burning infantry fighting vehicle loaded with ammunition from a congestion of military personnel, for which he was awarded a medal.

In 1991, he served as chief of staff, acting battalion commander of a motorized rifle regiment of the Taman division. During the August coup, the division's military personnel were sent to Moscow to control the state of emergency introduced by the putschists - the State Emergency Committee as part of the USSR Cabinet of Ministers. By order of Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, more than 350 tanks, more than 400 armored personnel carriers and a total of about 4,000 soldiers were brought into the capital. They took up positions mainly in the center of the city. One of the columns with infantry fighting vehicles and motorized rifles was commanded 25-year-old Surovikin, on the night of August 21, he was heading to the building of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (called the White House), where the leaders of the republic, who opposed the GKChP, gathered, including the first, elected just over a month ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The column was stopped and blocked in the tunnel under the Garden Ring by the defenders of the White House. Stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the BMP, several people tried to jump on the vehicles. One of the protesters, Dmitry Komar, died in the process. According to the official version, he fell from the body of the BPM when it made a sharp maneuver, and fell under the tracks. Then the military opened warning fire in the tunnel, which led to two more casualties - Vladimir Usov and Dmitry Krichevsky were killed. All three posthumously received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

After the failure of the coup and the removal of members of the GKChP from power, Surovikin was arrested, he spent six months in Matrosskaya Tishina, but was acquitted on the basis that he was following orders. The Moscow prosecutor's office in December 1991 terminated the criminal case against him and other servicemen "due to the absence of signs of a criminally punishable act."

The materials of the administrative investigation stated : “The personnel of the battalion ... in a difficult situation showed restraint, courage, did not allow the seizure of weapons and ammunition, military equipment ... and stopped by their actions possible further unnecessary victims on the part of military personnel and civilians.” According to the recollections of participants in the events, the order to release Captain Surovikin was given personally by Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

In 1995, Surovikin graduated with honors from the command department of the Frunze Military Academy. After the academy, he served as commander of a motorized rifle battalion (stationed in Tajikistan), and then chief of staff of the 92nd motorized rifle regiment, chief of staff and commander of the 149th guards motorized rifle regiment, chief of staff of the 201st Gatchina motorized rifle division. In 1998, Surovikin was appointed commander of the 149th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 201st Motorized Rifle Division, and in 1999, deputy division commander. He took part in the Russian units in the armed conflict in Tajikistan and in the Second Chechen War.

In 2002 he graduated with honors from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. After the academy, he served in the Volga-Urals Military District, where, from 2002, he commanded the 34th Motorized Rifle Division (service station - Yekaterinburg).

From June 2004, Surovikin served as commander of the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division stationed in Chechnya. This formation was the basis of the grouping of the Ministry of Defense in the zone of the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus and repeatedly took part in clashes.

Commanding both divisions, Surovikin gained a reputation as a tough and demanding military leader. TASS notes that during his service in Chechnya, his public promise to "destroy three militants for every dead soldier" gained wide resonance.

After Chechnya, he served in the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army with headquarters in Voronezh. From November 2005 he was deputy commander, from May 2006 - chief of staff - first deputy commander, in April 2008 he became army commander.

In November 2008, Surovikin holds the position of Chief of the Main Operational Directorate (GOU) of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces and is responsible for planning and command and control of troops. In this post, he worked in the context of the "operation to force Georgia to peace" and the reform of the armed forces carried out by the Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov (in office from February 2007 to November 2012).

From January to July 2010, he served as chief of staff - first deputy commander of the Volga-Urals Military District. In July 2010, he was transferred to the Central Military District, where he held the position of first acting, and then the commander of the district. In 2012, Surovikin led the working group of the Ministry of Defense to create a military police. With a further prospect of being appointed head of the Main Directorate of the Military Police, he acted as head of the Main Directorate of the Military Police, but never took this position. As Kommersant wrote, the chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky spoke out against the appointment, declaring that Surovikin had a criminal record.

In a letter addressed to Serdyukov, Fridinsky indicated that in September 1995 the military court of the Moscow garrison recognized Surovikin, then a student of the Academy. Frunze, guilty of "assisting in the acquisition and sale, as well as carrying firearms and ammunition without a permit" (Article 17, Part 1, Article 218 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). At the same time, he was sentenced to one year of probation. Later, the conviction was canceled, and in 2012 the sentence was canceled "due to the absence of corpus delicti in the acts." Sources of Kommersant in the Ministry of Defense linked the situation around Surovikin with a conflict of interest between the military police and the military prosecutor's office. As a result, in October 2012 he was appointed Chief of Staff - First Deputy Commander of the Eastern Military District with headquarters in Khabarovsk.

From October 2013 to October 2017, Surovikin served as commander of the troops of the Eastern Military District, in this position he was involved in the creation of military infrastructure in the Kuril Islands and in the Arctic.

In December 2013, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel General.

From March 2017, Surovikin led the Russian grouping of troops in Syria. Abundant reports by United Nations commissions, as well as accountability, human rights, and humanitarian organisations, documented war crimes with pictures, videos, and firsthand testimony. The world had watched countless incidents of missiles destroying hospitals or mutilated Syrian children covered in dust and blood being pulled from the rubble of destroyed apartment buildings.

The Air Force general oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in northern Syria in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign was reported to have shown callous disregard for the lives of the roughly three million civilians in the area. Similarly to what it did in Chechnya, Russia implemented a well-tested strategy of attrition against civilians. Putin’s propaganda machine labelled all Syrian civilians in opposition-controlled areas as “terrorists”.

It was evident through the strategy of the Syrian and Russian government that healthcare facilities were being deliberately targeted with humanitarian organisations condemning all parties involved for violating the Geneva Conventions. Violations of medical neutrality and International Humanitarian Law led to the loss of countless medical personnel, civilians and health care facilities; setting the country back to health levels last seen thirty years ago.

At the end of November 2017, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces (VKS). For the first time this type of troops was headed by a combined arms general. In December 2017, the Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces was awarded the title of Hero of Russia "for the courage and heroism shown in the performance of military duty in the Syrian Arab Republic." Surovikin returned to command of the Russian group in Syria in the spring of 2018, after the aggravation of the situation in the region, and led the troops in the Arab Republic until April 2019.

In August 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Surovikin the rank of army general.

In June 2022, it became known that Surovikin was in command of the southern group of troops participating in the military special operation in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense stated that this formation "completed the rout" of the encircled grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Gorsky cauldron. Surovikin participated in the capture of Severodonetsk and the operation to unblock the Azot plant, as well as in the fighting near Lisichansk.

On October 8, 2022, Surovikin, by order of the head of the Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, was appointed commander of the combined group of troops in the area of the special operation in Ukraine. Prior to this, the existence of such a position was not reported. By December 2022, all five Military District commanders, the head of the Airborne forces (VDV), the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, and multiple junior commanders had been replaced. The National Defense Management Center in Moscow continued to coordinate and manage forces.

Ukraine witnessed a new phase of the Russian invasion in early October 2022 — a Syrianisation of the war, in which Russia was primarily targeting one group: civilians. This new phase started with the appointment of General Sergei Surovikin, known for his brutal bombing campaigns in Syria, as the overall commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 859 attacks on healthcare centers since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, resulting in 101 deaths and 136 injuries.

President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin and the commander of the grouping of Russian troops in the special operation zone in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, changed their tactics of military operations, the Russian army “learned how to fight,” said Andrey Gurulev, a member of the State Duma Committee on Defense, former deputy commander of the Southern Military District, in a telegram channel 09 January 2023.

“Enemies write about the change in tactics of hostilities by our president, this is true, but this is a study that took place during the conduct of hostilities, today, of course, our armed forces are working more efficiently,” Gurulev wrote, noting that the army “learned to fight,” "admit mistakes, analyze and draw conclusions." He also noted that after the arrival of Surovikin "to the management of combat processes," the United States began to provide Ukraine with more support and supply more weapons.

On January 11, 2023, Surovikin at the head of the joint group of troops was replaced by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The Ministry of Defense explained the increase in the level of leadership of the special operation by "expanding the scale of the tasks being solved", the need to organize closer interaction between the types and types of troops. Surovikin in the joint grouping of troops became Gerasimov's deputy - along with the commander-in-chief of the Ground Forces Oleg Salyukov and deputy chief of the General Staff Alexei Kim. Surovikin was replaced despite a widespread assessment that Surovikin was among Russia’s most capable commanders and largely credited with stabilizing Russian lines in the wake of successful Ukrainian offensives.

Prigozhin repeatedly criticized the Ministry of Defense and complained about the "shell hunger." At the same time, he praised Surovikin and said that when he was the head of the joint group, there were no problems with ammunition. In early May 2023, Prigozhin announced that the issue with the shells had been resolved, and the PMCs promised to "give" Surovikin "as a person who will make all decisions in the framework of the combat operations of the Wagner PMC in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense."

Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, appeared in a video 24 June 2024 urging the Wagner group to halt any moves against the army and return to their bases. He urged, before it's too late, to obey the will of the president. “The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen,” General Surovikin said.

“We fought together, took risks, we won together. We are of the same blood, we are warriors. I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country. You can’t play into the hands of the enemy in this difficult time for the country,” he said. “Before it is too late, it is necessary and necessary to obey the will and order of the popularly elected president. Stop the columns, return them to the points of permanent deployment. Solve all problems only peacefully under the leadership of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, ”added Surovikin.

During the years of military service, Surovikin was wounded three times. He was awarded a number of state awards, including the Orders of the Red Star, "For Military Merit", as well as three Orders of Courage, medals of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" I and II degrees, medals "For Courage", "For Military Merit" and "For difference in the protection of the state border.

Surovikin is married, his wife Anna in 2016, when he was the commander of the Eastern Military District, declared an income of 44.2 million rubles, three apartments and a Lexus RX 350. At that time, she was a co-owner of Argus-SFK. The Surovikins have four children: three daughters and a son.

On 24 February 2023 the US Department of State took actions to increase the costs on President Putin’s regime. All targets are being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 14024, which authorizes sanctions with respect to specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation. Anna Borisovna Surovikina was designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(iii)(C) for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of Argus Holding. Joint Stock Company Argus SFK (Argus SFK) was being designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Argus Holding. Argus SFK was a subsidiary of Argus Holding and is tied to dealings with companies owned by SDN-listed oligarch Gennadiy Timchenko. Limited Liability Company Iskusstvo Krasoty and Limited Liability Company Rudniy were designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(vii) for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Surovikina.