“Having failed in Ukraine so far, in addition to committing war crimes, Putin has appointed a new commander, General Alexander Dvornikov, with extensive experience in committing heinous crimes of genocide against defenseless civilians in Syria,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement. linked to pro-Western rebels in Syria. In the six months that General Dvornikov led Russia’s military campaign in support of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, his air force carried out 9,000 bombings, destroying large parts of Aleppo, Homs and other smaller cities. He is known to have helped shape a Russian strategy to break the will of citizens living in besieged cities by deliberately targeting basic infrastructure such as bakeries, hospitals and water sources. For Russia and the Assad regime, the approach has been successful. His campaign forced Western-backed insurgents and Islamic State extremists to withdraw, “liberating” vast areas for Assad and impressing Putin, who awarded General Dvornikov the top military medal in Moscow. The Kremlin has not commented on General Dvornikov’s promotion. Russia, meanwhile, has waged war in which up to 1,000 troops have taken part in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which lies between Poland and Lithuania. Moscow warned this week of any possible action against the region, saying “this would be a game of fire.”
