Russia relieves general in charge of Syrian operations, military bloggers say
PHOTO CAPTION: Russian solders are seen at a new corridor of Jisreen-Mleha road where they expect people to arrive from eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, March 8. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian war bloggers reported on Sunday that Moscow has dismissed Sergei Kisel, the general in charge of its forces in Syria, after insurgents swept into the city of Aleppo in the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad in years.
Russia is a key Assad ally. The removal of Kisel, 53, was reported by the Rybar Telegram channel, which is close to the Russian defence ministry, and by the Voenny Osvedomitel (Military Informant) blog.
Reuters has requested comment from the Russian defence ministry. Since the start of the Ukraine war, Russia has made a number of military reshuffles that were not publicly announced.
Unconfirmed reports said Kisel was being replaced by Colonel General Alexander Chaiko.
The military blogs were scathing about the performance of Kisel, who previously commanded Russia's 1st Guards Tank Army in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, where Moscow's forces were driven back in a lightning counter-attack by Ukrainian troops in late 2022.
"Apparently he was supposed to reveal his hidden talents in Syria, but something got in the way again," Voenny Osvedomitel wrote.
Rybar commented: "The approach needs to change. The Syrian sandbox has long been a place for laundering the reputations of unsuccessful generals who turned out to be incompetent in the zone of the special military operation" - Russia's term for the war in Ukraine.
Rybar speculated that Russia might even turn to Sergei Surovikin, a general who earned the nickname "General Armageddon" for his ruthlessness in Syria and was briefly in charge of the Ukrainian war effort. Surovikin was demoted last year, when unconfirmed reports said he had been investigated for possible complicity in a mutiny by Russia's Wagner mercenary group.
The insurgent advance in Syria was the first since March 2020 when Russia and Turkey, which supports the rebels, agreed to a ceasefire that led to the halting of military action in northwest Syria.
On Sunday, the Syrian army said it had recaptured several towns that had been overrun by rebels in recent days. The insurgents are a coalition of Turkish-backed mainstream secular armed groups, along with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that is the opposition's most formidable military force.
Aleppo had been held by the government since a 2016 victory there, one of the war's major turning points, when Russian-backed Syrian forces besieged and laid waste to rebel-held eastern areas of what had been the country's largest city.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and David Holmes)
