Commander-in-Chief of the VKS Surikin. Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces Sergei Vladimirovich Surikin

The decoding of the relatively recently appeared in the media abbreviation “VKS” is known to almost everyone: “Aerospace Forces”. The Russian Aerospace Forces were formed in 2019. However, the prerequisites for the formation of these forces emerged in the second half of 2008. Forcing Georgia to peace forced the command of the Russian armed forces to completely reconsider the structure of the Russian Air Force, which in practice turned out to be morally outdated and imperfect.

The current state of the Russian Aerospace Forces

After August 1, 2015, as a result of the merger of the Air Force and Aerospace Defense, a new type of armed forces was formed - the Russian Aerospace Forces. The commander of the Aerospace Forces was General Viktor Bondarev, who repeatedly participated in various military conflicts, Hero of the Russian Federation and Honored Pilot of the Russian Federation.

The creation of the Aerospace Forces made it possible to concentrate all the country's air defense assets - air force and air defense troops with the latest equipment - in a single structure.

BBC today

The Air Force of the Russian Aerospace Forces performs the following tasks:

1. Air and space reconnaissance;
2. Detection of the beginning of hostilities against the country in aerospace. After detection, the aerospace forces must notify the control authorities, and using all available weapons, repel the attack;
3. Protection of important and strategic management facilities and economic areas of the country. In addition to defense, aerospace forces must strike at enemy strategic targets;
4. Air support for other types of troops.

In addition to combat operations, the Russian Aerospace Forces must ensure launches of vehicles into space and control them using the latest equipment.

Prospects for Air Force modernization

The General Headquarters of Space Defense stated that the Aerospace Forces in the coming years will be equipped with more than a hundred units of new aircraft, mainly for military purposes. This statement was made after the MAKS-2017 aerospace salon. According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces, General Bondarev, the tasks of updating the aircraft fleet are being solved at an accelerated pace, and by 2019 it is planned to increase the combat effectiveness of the Aerospace Forces aviation to 95 percent.

In addition to the arrival of new equipment to military units, major repairs and modernization of older aircraft and helicopters are expected. Bondarenko emphasized that the equipment of the Russian Aerospace Forces is in no way inferior to the air fleets of world powers.

When asked whether the Aerospace Forces will receive increased funding and what the general course of the state armament program is until 2025, the general replied that there will be more than enough funds for equipment and the implementation of the Aerospace Forces’ tasks. It was also said that by 2025, 80-90 percent of combat aircraft will be the latest models of equipment.

Tactical level of the Air Force today

Today, the Air Force fleet contains more than 3,800 aircraft, 1,400 helicopters of various types and has the latest equipment, some models of which have no equal in the world. Considering the total number of aircraft, it is difficult to believe that in 7 years it will be possible to replace more than 80 percent of it. Such colossal expenses are beyond the capabilities of even the NATO army. Although observing the renewal trend, which has been clearly visible since 2011, it should be recognized that every year the Aerospace Forces management purchases hundreds of combat equipment.

According to the VKS information service, each pilot training center will receive new Sr-10 training aircraft in 2019. They will be used in pilot training along with the Yak-152 and Yak-130. Since the Air Force is expected to receive many new fighters and bombers in the coming years, there is no need to worry about the safety of the country’s airspace.

Problems of import substitution and ways to solve them

In the recent past, most helicopter engines were supplied to Russia from Ukraine. However, as a result of the aggravation of the situation and the change of government in Ukraine, these supplies almost completely stopped. As a result of the enormous work done by the United Engine Corporation, this problem was solved in literally three years. Now the production of helicopter engines has been established in Russia. The rapid expansion of production capacity made it possible to supply the entire Russian helicopter industry.

A similar situation arose with the production of engines for cruise missiles. The quick response of Russian designers made it possible to cope with this problem.

Unfortunately, not all problems with import substitution were successfully resolved. The military transport aviation of the VKS was left without AN series aircraft. After the change of power in Ukraine, the joint program was curtailed, and there are no Russian analogs of the AN series military transport aircraft yet.

The Ministry of Defense has selected the main contenders for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces (VKS). The candidacies of two military leaders are being considered: Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Igor Makushev and Commander of the Space Forces, Colonel General Alexander Golovko. It is noteworthy that Colonel General Sergei Surovikin was initially nominated for this post. His appointment could have become a sensation, since Surovikin is a combined arms commander.

As the Ministry of Defense told Izvestia, the final choice between Alexander Golovko and Igor Makushev will be made in the very near future, since the current commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev, will leave to work in the Federation Council by the end of September. Both candidates are honored military leaders and have extensive leadership experience.

Lieutenant General Igor Makushev was born on August 6, 1964 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1985, he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, and in 2006, from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

He has a reputation as an accomplished fighter pilot and combat commander. Makushev went through all the steps of the career ladder - from pilot to deputy commander of the air army. He is qualified as a sniper pilot and has over 3 thousand flight hours. As deputy commander of the 16th Air Army, he took part in the operation to force Georgia to peace in August 2008. Igor Makushev became known to the general public when in the summer of 2014 he presented at briefings the position of the Russian military department in connection with the death of the Malaysian Boeing 777.

In his current position, General Makushev solves the problems of scientific substantiation of promising areas for the construction, development, training, use and support of the Armed Forces.

Unlike Makushev, the second candidate did not come from the flight personnel, but from the space forces. Colonel General Alexander Golovko was born on January 29, 1964 in Dnepropetrovsk. Graduated from the Kharkov Higher Military Command and Engineering School of Missile Forces (1986), the Military Academy named after. F.E. Dzerzhinsky (1996), Military Academy of the General Staff (2003).

From 1986 to 2001, he served in various command and engineering positions in military units of the Main Test Center for Testing and Control of Space Facilities named after. G.S. Titova (GITSIU KS). In 2007, he headed the GITSIU KS, and in 2011 he became the head of the Plesetsk cosmodrome. In December 2012, Golovko was appointed commander of the Aerospace Defense Forces.

According to Izvestia, until recently the main contender was considered the commander of the Eastern Military District (EMD), Colonel General Sergei Surovikin. However, according to some reports, he himself refused this position. After all, even the very fact of considering the candidacy of a “land” general became a kind of sensation in military circles.

Sergei Surovikin graduated from the Omsk Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1987, and later from the Academy. M.V. Frunze and the Military Academy of the General Staff. He went through all stages of his officer's career. In the 1990s he served in Tajikistan in the 201st Motorized Rifle Division, and in the 2000s he commanded the 42nd Guards Division in Chechnya. In 2012, he led the working group of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the creation of military police. In October 2013, Surovikin was appointed commander of the Troops of the Eastern Military District.

The reason for nominating Surovikin for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces was that he commanded a group of troops in Syria, where he managed to effectively integrate ground forces, aviation, air defense systems and a space group into a single system.

The fact that the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev, will be delegated to the Federation Council from the Kirov Region became known in July of this year. Bondarev has held the position of Air Force Commander-in-Chief since May 6, 2012. The Colonel General was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces on August 1, 2015. It was under him that the Air Force turned into the Aerospace Forces due to the integration of the Aerospace Defense Forces into them.

The most desirable candidate is Colonel General Surovikin

For the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, after it was vacated by Colonel General Viktor Bondarev on Tuesday, according to MK sources, three main candidates are being considered: Commander of the Space Forces, Colonel General Alexander Golovko, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Ministry of Defense, General Lieutenant Igor Makushev, as well as the commander of the Eastern Military District, Colonel General Sergei Surovikin.

Candidate for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces Sergei Surovikin. Photo: 42msd.livejournal

At the moment, the acting commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces is Lieutenant General Pavel Kuralenko, the first deputy commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces. According to MK, he is also being considered as a successor. However, oddly enough, Sergei Surovikin is still considered the main candidate.

If his appointment takes place, it will become a real sensation: a combined arms general - commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces - this has never happened in the history of modern Russia. However, it should be borne in mind that Surovikin is considered one of the most experienced and combat generals. He commanded not only the district, but also our military group in Syria, where he gained experience in managing heterogeneous forces, when space forces, air defense systems, aviation, and various ground structures were combined in a single integrated system.

And here I would like to remind you that such appointments - when a commander is appointed to a non-core branch or branch of troops - as a rule, indicate that order needs to be restored in this structure. And this should be done by a person who is not burdened by official and friendly ties in this branch or branch of troops and is capable of looking at the problems there with a fresh, unclouded look.

So, in 1987, after the high-profile story of the overflight and landing of the German amateur pilot Matthias Rust on Red Square, major organizational events were held in the army. Then Army General Ivan Moiseevich Tretyak, an outstanding military leader, but who had nothing to do with air defense, was appointed commander-in-chief of the air defense. The troops remembered him as a person involved in the arrangement of military camps throughout the country, which turned out to be very useful for air defense troops, although it was not directly related to the tasks of combat training.

But now, when the tasks of combat training are a priority, the candidacy for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces, according to our sources, is considered exclusively from these positions. And here other candidates for this position are also spoken of as exceptionally honored military leaders.

Lieutenant General Igor Makushev went through all the required steps of the career ladder - from a simple fighter pilot to deputy commander of the air army. In 1985, he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, and in 2006, from the General Staff Academy. He is a sniper pilot and has over 3,000 hours of flight time. Many people remember him from the press conferences of the military department in 2014, where he presented materials from the Ministry of Defense related to the death of the Malaysian Boeing 777 over the Donbass.

Another candidate for commander-in-chief, Colonel General Alexander Golovko, also graduated from the General Staff Academy in 2003. He served in positions from department engineer, station chief, company commander, department head, department head at the Main Center for Testing and Control of Space Facilities named after G.S. Titov to commander of the Space Forces.

The commander of the Russian group in Syria, Colonel General, will soon be appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces, reports citing two sources in the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“Colonel General Surovikin will take up the duties of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces in October of this year,” the agency writes. The military department clarified that this information has already been communicated to the leadership of the Aerospace Forces.

Rumors that the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Colonel General Viktor Bondarev, will soon leave his post have been circulating in the media for a long time. Under this military leader, the flight accident rate in domestic military aviation has sharply increased, sources among military personnel told Gazeta.Ru. According to the publication's interlocutors,

the number of plane crashes in other years simply went off scale, which gave Russian military aviators the basis to call the most “bloody” commander-in-chief in recent years.

Previously, some publications considered possible candidates to be proposed for the vacant position of commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces. Among them were the chairman of the scientific and technical council, Lieutenant General Igor, and the commander of the Space Forces, Colonel General Alexander Golovko.

Colonel General Surovikin was considered the least possible candidate to fill the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces. At the same time, the main obstacle to the general’s promotion to this high post was supposedly his combined-arms origin.

However, Gazeta.Ru’s sources, who are well acquainted with the situation, assessed Lieutenant General Makushev’s chances of being appointed to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces as practically zero. For all his considerable positive merits, Makushev frankly does not qualify for this high position. This military leader simply does not have the necessary leadership qualities, say experts who are well acquainted with the general.

Inconvenient candidate

A significant part of the generals and officers of the Aerospace Forces took a breath with great relief when they learned that the appointment of a colonel general would not take place. And the officers and generals of the Aerospace Forces have every reason to judge this way.

In particular, in 2001, representatives of the Space Forces headed the Aerospace Defense Forces. Never before had they had anything to do with these troops and did not understand them deeply.

This branch of the military was completely unfamiliar and alien to them. Therefore, the decisions of representatives of the Space Forces, when they headed formations unusual for them, were, to put it mildly, controversial.

For example, they diverted the lion's share of financial resources from the accounts of VKO, and Gazeta.Ru talked about this earlier, to create the so-called Hardware and Software Complex for Aerospace Defense (PAK VKO). Outwardly, it looks very impressive - displays, screens, illumination from numerous light bulbs and scoreboards, but from a combat point of view, its effectiveness, if not zero, is in any case doubtful.

Today, the Space Forces include the 15th Army of the Aerospace Special Purpose Forces, consisting of the Main Center for Space Situation Intelligence (GC RKO), the 153rd Main Test Space Center named after G.S. Titov (GICC) in the city of Krasnoznamensk, the 1st State Test Cosmodrome of the Ministry of Defense in Plesetsk, the Main Missile Attack Warning Center (MC PRN), as well as the 28th Arsenal in Tambov.

All command posts in this branch of the military are occupied by “cosmonauts,” that is, people from the GICC. Specialists of the missile attack warning system and other structural units of the Space Forces, in the best case scenario, in this state of affairs, can only rise to the rank of colonel. All other paths are closed to them. In many ways, a similar picture emerged due to the personal preferences of the leadership of this branch of the military.

So if the “cosmonauts” were at the head of the Aerospace Forces, they would instantly turn the entire budget of the Aerospace Forces in their favor and place their people in all key positions, as is currently the case in the 15th Special Purpose Aerospace Forces Army.

All other types of troops (forces) of the Aerospace Forces would find themselves in the position of poor relatives. And, it must be said frankly, such a picture would be typical for any other specialist general nominated for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces, and not only a representative of the Space Forces.

Compromise figure

Some publications have reported that military pilots will perceive the appointment of Colonel General Sergei Surovikin to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces with irritation. However, currently in the Aerospace Forces one can count up to nine branches of troops and seventeen types of support.

Without any exaggeration, today this is a clearly defined interspecific combined arms structure.

As Gazeta.Ru previously said, the components of the Aerospace Forces are very different organisms. The competencies of an individual commander-in-chief (even a native of the military branches of the Aerospace Forces) with extensive service experience and a broad outlook under the existing order of things will in many cases be frankly lacking. The pilot will be little familiar with the organization of air defense and will be completely unfamiliar with the missile and space defense forces. The pilot will also feel awkward, for example, at the Main Test Space Center. A person coming from an air defense background will clearly feel uncomfortable in parts of bomber aviation, and even more so in long-range aviation. And the commander-in-chief of the “cosmonauts” will be completely lost in the issues and problems of aviation and air defense and missile defense troops.

Therefore, the appointment of a combined arms general as the head of such a complex branch of the Armed Forces, such as the Aerospace Forces today, is quite possibly the only possible way out of the current situation.

The strength of combined arms commanders is precisely that they consider all branches of the Armed Forces and branches of the armed forces exclusively through the prism of the effective implementation of assigned combat and operational missions. They don't have any personal preferences. They cannot “breathe unevenly”, for example, to artillerymen, motorists, specialists in electronic warfare or radiation, chemical and biological protection - for them everyone is family, everyone is their own, everyone is the same and equally close and are ultimately intended for only one thing - joint efforts achieve success in armed confrontation.

In particular, at one time the country's air defense forces, consisting of fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile and radio technical troops, were for a long time led by combined arms commanders - Marshals Sergei Biryuzov and Pavel Batitsky, Army General Ivan Tretyak. And these were, frankly speaking, the best times for the Air Defense Forces.

In particular, when the Air Defense Forces were headed by Army General Tretyak, he immediately ordered a report to him on how certain types of troops were financed and what their contribution was in solving assigned tasks in peacetime and wartime. And I immediately discovered a lot of distortions and inconsistencies. Then the combined arms commander Tretyak balanced the allocation of the necessary funds,

Moreover, he proceeded not from personal preferences, but exclusively from the interests of the business and the contribution of each structural unit to the overall success.

Tretyak had a neutral attitude towards all branches of the military and straightened out all the excesses and absurdities that were made by his aviator predecessors. He was concerned with only one thing - the unconditional fulfillment of the combat and operational tasks assigned to the branch of the Armed Forces.

Tretyak was very attentive to military science and the development of the Air Defense Forces. After him, the commanders-in-chief of the Air Defense Forces, Air Force or Aerospace Forces, if they remembered science, it was only when the question arose about their personal well-being or the fate of the branch of the Armed Forces.

As for the pilots at the head of the Air Force (VKS), the last strong and authoritative Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force seems to have been Air Chief Marshal Pavel Kutakhov. After him, no figures of equal size appeared in the Air Force (VKS). So aviators should not be offended by the appointment of a combined arms commander. Over the past 25 years, no pilot has emerged as a commander-in-chief comparable in quality and merit to Kutakhov.

Tasks and powers

The new commander-in-chief faces major challenges. By and large, at present the Aerospace Forces are - and Gazeta.Ru talked about this earlier - a hodgepodge that has no signs of a strict system. This semi-finished product, born in an atmosphere of fierce debate and to some extent a compromise between all participants in the discussion, is still very far from perfection and effective combat use for its intended purpose.

To begin with, it is probably necessary to clarify the functions of the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces in peacetime and wartime. Before Sergei Surovikin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces actually controlled only the Long-Range (DA) and Military Transport (VTA) aviation of the Aerospace Forces. The operational formations of the Armed Forces (Army Air Force and Air Defense) were not subordinate to him. If we take into account that, in addition, the DA and the VTA act according to the plans of the General Staff, then here too the capabilities of the Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces were very limited. In addition, it controls the launch of spacecraft. Missile attack warning and space control systems operate virtually autonomously. The Commander-in-Chief currently cannot order weapons for a branch of the Armed Forces.

So, first, the new commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces needs to understand his powers, functions and capabilities. Real combat experience will greatly help General Surovikin.

People who have been in war have a completely different attitude to many issues. His age also plays in the general’s favor—General Surovikin is only 50 years old.

According to Gazeta.Ru, the appointment of a new commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces is far from the last in a series of such reshuffles. In the near future, it is quite possible that a new Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces will be appointed. In many ways, such appointments are due to the fact that a significant number of senior officers of the Armed Forces are at an age close to the maximum age for active military service. So a wave of reshuffles and promotions in the branches of the Armed Forces and the central apparatus of the Ministry of Defense is simply inevitable.

General Surovikin knows how to find an approach to his subordinates - one of his deputies shot himself right in his office, another subordinate complained about the massacre on his part.

However, Surovikin is expected to head the Aerospace Forces (VKS) from October. Moreover, the general had never sat at the controls of an airplane in his life. What will his subordinates think about this?

The commander of the Russian group in Syria, 50-year-old Colonel General Sergei Surovikin, will head the Aerospace Forces from October instead of Viktor Bondarev, who is leaving for the Federation Council, sources in the military department told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

According to sources, this information has already been conveyed to the leadership of the Aerospace Forces.

"Ground travelers" in aviation are called "boots"

Among military pilots, the message about Surovikin’s possible appointment will be received with extreme irritation, said a senior reserve Air Force general.

“Surovikin never flew in his life; all his life he wore green shoulder straps, which people with blue shoulder straps despise. He did not command a single branch of the troops introduced into the Aerospace Forces and did not even stand next to them during his entire service. I did not study in the profile of any of the four former branches of the Armed Forces, now introduced into the Aerospace Forces. For the Air Force to be headed by a man from the motorized infantry? This has never happened at all,” said the newspaper’s interlocutor. – In aviation, ground travelers are called “boots”. His subordinates, of course, will carry out all of Surovikin’s orders, but they will secretly despise him.”

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, former deputy commander of the Air Force of the Baltic Military District of the USSR for army aviation, Major General Alexander Tsalko also perceives such an appointment without delight. “Not the best option, to be honest,” he told the newspaper VZGLYAD. “Maybe he is a good person. But in general, in an amicable way, it would be better for him to refuse this position. I would say that he doesn’t understand this matter. Don’t sit on your own sleigh – this is my position,” he added.

“There are levels where the position is political, but the Minister of Defense and the Commander-in-Chief must be professionally trained. Or at least listen to experts,” Tsalko emphasized. – This must be absolutely special training: a pilot, preferably front-line aviation. For example, an army commander, let’s say, who has passed the levels of command of a regiment and a division, is a person who will manage more or less competently.”

Tsalko adds that with such appointments, it happens that commanders have to be taught basic things. “The level is very high. He needs to delve into literally everything - documents regulating flight work, combat training, everyday life. There are so many features that it simply won’t fit,” explained the pilot.

In this regard, Tsalko noted: “The problem is that the combined arms commander believes that with appointment to a position he receives a certain knowledge.” Let us recall that the command staff of such branches as the Navy, Airborne Forces and VKS (VVS), as a rule, undergo training in specialized, rather than combined arms military universities.

“During the Zapad-81 exercises, the late General Valentin Varennikov twice removed me from the post of regiment commander because I did not allow the crew to fly in the fog. Life is full of such cases when they press incompetently. Sometimes people even die because of this incompetence. And such a commander-in-chief will have a problem. Will he be able to obey his specialized deputies or not? I'm afraid not always."

– the general complained. Tsalko noted that if we take army aviation, which was repeatedly transferred from the Air Force to the ground forces and back, then “the paradox is that even some pilots began to command army aviation incompetently.”

“The military are forced people. You endure it no matter what. What are they going to show him, a fig in their pocket? They will carry out commands. If there are bad commands, they will avoid them,” he explained.

The general is confident that few people in the Aerospace Forces will be enthusiastic about Surovikin’s appointment: “It’s not a matter of ambition to fly. The point is that people don’t understand.”

A high-ranking source of the newspaper VZGLYAD in the Russian Air Force reminds: each branch of the military and branch of the armed forces has its own professional language for orders and instructions. It is with the help of this language that generals assign combat missions to their subordinates, and for tank crews the mission statement sounds fundamentally different than for sailors or pilots. The tank general simply does not know in what words and concepts to issue this or that order for, say, an air squadron. If only for this reason, due to the appointment of General Surovikin, the VKS can expect problems with force control.

The new commander in chief knows how to attack quickly

Whether this is a coincidence or not is still unclear, but Surovikin’s appointment became known the morning after good news came from Syria - our troops managed to quickly break through the encirclement of militants, which included a platoon of Russian military police in Idlib province on Tuesday. 29 Russian soldiers were freed from encirclement. It was General Surovikin, by the way, the creator of the Russian military police, who managed to organize the unblockade operation with lightning speed.

But Tsalko is confident: success in Syria is a shared achievement, because Surovikin is not the first commander of the group, and he led the group quite recently, in June. “This is not the person who came to Syria at the most difficult time and took on all this. He came to a well-established farm that works,” the interlocutor emphasized.

In Syria, the commander has deputies in the areas. “There is a deputy for aviation who gives him professional advice,” Tsalko emphasized. According to him, the commander is consulting on how to act in each specific case. At the same time, Tsalko emphasized, the deputy for aviation is protected by the fact that he is subordinate in parallel to the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces - that is, in case of disagreement, he can turn to his own commander-in-chief.

The battle path began in the August putsch

Sergey Surovikin was born in Novosibirsk in 1966. In 1987, he graduated from the Omsk Higher Command Military School with a gold medal, in 1995, with honors, from the Frunze Military Academy, and in 2002, also with honors, from the General Staff Academy.

Surovikin first entered the media field as a young captain. During the days of the August 1991 putsch, a battalion of the Taman division under his command was sent to patrol the center of Moscow, and it was during an incident with his battalion’s infantry fighting vehicles on the Garden Ring that three young people were killed. Surovikin was arrested, but the charges against him were eventually dropped because he was only following orders. Moreover, by Yeltsin’s personal order, he was promoted to rank.

Since 1995, he was sent to Tajikistan, where he rose from battalion commander to division chief of staff. In 2002, he was appointed commander of the 34th Simferopol Motorized Rifle Division. In 2004 he fought in Chechnya, after which he commanded the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army. Then he was deputy chief of the General Staff and chief of staff of the Central Military District. Before his appointment in Syria, he led the Ministry of Defense working group on the creation of military police and then commanded the troops of the Eastern Military District.

Another noisy incident with Surovikin occurred during his studies at the Frunze Academy - in 1995, he was sentenced to a year of suspended imprisonment for carrying weapons and ammunition. However, it later turned out that he had been framed, and his criminal record was overturned. In 2004, Surovikin’s subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Tsibizov, accused his superior of beating him for political reasons, but then he himself withdrew the statement from the prosecutor’s office.

In the same year, a tragic incident occurred - right in the office of Divisional Commander Surovikin, his deputy for armaments, Colonel Andrei Shtakal, shot himself in his presence.

The new commander-in-chief will rely on specialized deputies

The editor-in-chief of the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, Viktor Murakhovsky, suggests waiting for the official appointment of a new commander-in-chief. But in general, he does not see anything unusual in the fact that a combined arms general will lead a “foreign” branch of the military. “The Aerospace Forces is becoming an interspecific structure that includes many branches of the military and works in the interests of all armed forces, and not only in the airspace,” Murakhovsky told the VZGLYAD newspaper.

The expert recalled that Surovikin previously commanded the Eastern Military District: “This is also one of the largest interspecific operational formations, which included the fleet, air army, air defense and all other types of troops in the east of the country.”

Murakhovsky noted that the new commander-in-chief will command different branches of the military, in particular Long-Range Aviation and the Air Force itself, operational-tactical aviation, and he already has such experience. After all, the group in Syria includes air defense, ground forces and special operations forces.

Navy forces also periodically appear off the coast of Syria, which quickly come under the command of the commander for the duration of their presence. Murakhovsky credits Surovikin for the success of the Russian aviation group in Syria.

The training of flight personnel and the actual use of aviation will be carried out by individual people, Murakhovsky explained: for example, the Deputy Commander-in-Chief for Aviation. The use of various types of troops is planned by a special headquarters. “The Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces is now the person who organizes the training and combat use of interspecific weapons systems operating in the air and space,” he explained. The expert does not expect any indignation on the part of the Aerospace Forces pilots with the new assignment. “Those who are indignant in the army quit,” he concluded.

As you know, the military is conservative and does not like change. Similar rumors were heard in the officer corps in the spring of 2004, when Anatoly Serdyukov, a tax official far from the army, was appointed Minister of Defense. Since his official biography included the position of director of a furniture store, many officers initially called him Taburetkin.

However, over time, Serdyukov got into the swing of things and even launched a large-scale reform. On the eve of the “five-day war,” almost no one remembered his furniture past. And the reforms he started forever changed the face of our army, and years later even many of his critics admit that the reforms turned out to be correct in many respects.