General Aleksandr Dvornikov, 60, was responsible for brutal military operations in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine itself. As one of Vladimir Putin’s most loyal allies, he was awarded the highest honor of Hero of the Russian Federation by the Russian president in March 2016. Mariupol will fall “in hours” – follow live the updates of Ukraine As he did in Syria in 2015, Putin has turned to General Dvornikov in recent weeks in a desperate attempt to regain sovereignty over Ukraine, as it has become clear that Russian advance has stopped. The UK Department of Defense describes his appointment as an “attempt to consolidate command and control”. After Russian troops suffered heavy casualties and were forced to abandon any attempt to occupy Kiev, the president hopes his commander may be more successful in his new focus on the Donbas region. Here Sky News examines General Dvornikov’s reputation and what his appointment means for the next phase of the Ukrainian conflict. Soviet army since 17 Born in the Russian Far East near the border with China, Aleksandr Dvornikov graduated from his local military school in Ussuriysk in 1978 at the age of 17. After enlisting in the Soviet Army as a teenager, he underwent more advanced training at the Moscow Academy of Higher Education and became a squad commander in 1982. During his early years he served in the Far East Military District, securing roles as company commander and battalion chief of staff, before moving to East Germany to serve as deputy battalion commander there. Image: General Dvornikov (R) and Putin watch naval exercise in the Black Sea in 2020 By the end of the 1990s he had been awarded the “Battalion of Military Value” and the “Battalion of Courage”. In 1997 he became commander of the Motorized Rifle Division, which in 1999 invaded Grozny, the capital of Russia’s self-proclaimed independent province of Chechnya, during the Second Chechen War. General Dvornikov’s reputation as a “butcher” dates back to his time there. In Grozny it is believed that he ordered infantry troops to shoot at everyone – civilians and soldiers – while using illegal cluster bombs and cruise missiles to effectively level the city. Image: A Russian armored vehicle moves through Grozny in 2000 He finally fell on February 6, 2000, which helped Putin, then incumbent president, go to the polls and become a permanent Russian leader a month later. “The worst of the worst” After serving in various parts of Russia, including Siberia, General Dvornikov continued to rise through the ranks, becoming lieutenant general in late 2012 and general two years later. When, in 2015, Russian-backed Syrian government forces were on the verge of losing the civil war, Putin put General Dvornikov in charge of Russian forces there. It focused on the opposition stronghold in Aleppo in a battle that eventually killed about 50,000 Syrians. Image: General Dvornikov was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation in 2016. Photo: AP In an article in a Russian military magazine in 2018, General Dvornikov described using “continuous fire… day and night… without a break”. Retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis described him as “the worst of the worst,” who used chemical weapons such as sarin to drown civilians to death and relentless airstrikes to destroy homes and hospitals. “It’s a fool called by Vladimir Putin to level cities like Aleppo in Syria,” he told NBC News. “He has used the tools of terrorism throughout that period, including working with Syrian forces, torture centers, systematic rapes, nerve agents. He is the worst of the worst.” Image: Hundreds killed in Aleppo bombings in 2015 In October 2016, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said that Aleppo had become a “slaughterhouse” and “a horrific place of pain and fear, where the lifeless bodies of young children are trapped under rubble and pregnant women deliberately bombed “. As commander of the Russian army in Syria, General Dvornikov used similar tactics in Holmes, where tens of thousands more were killed and buildings were leveled. By mid-2015, that meant the Russians could ensure that President Bashar al-Assad was in control again. General Dvornikov wrote in 2018: “By the summer of 2015, the Syrian armed forces were completely depleted, the staff was discouraging, the corps of officers was degrading, and the leadership of the armed forces showed extremely low efficiency in controlling the administration.” Head of operations in Crimea and Donbas Although he has just been charged with war in Ukraine as a whole, General Dvornikov has been involved in the region since 2016. Two years after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, Putin made him commander of its Southern Military District. In this role he has overseen the Russian-backed separatist war against the Ukrainians in Crimea and the Donbass region, which has resulted in a total of about 13,000 deaths. Read more: What can we expect from the new Russian commander in charge of the invasion He was the mastermind of the 2019 operation to seize and seize three Ukrainian Navy ships and 24 sailors aboard the Sea of Azov around Crimea. The sailors were held hostage in Russia for about 10 months, prompting the EU to impose sanctions on the general and many of his colleagues that year. He also commanded the gathering of Russian military forces around the Ukrainian border in 2021, which served as the first indication that the Kremlin was planning to go to war. Image: Russian troops enter Mariupol this week What does Dvornikov mean by war? The Foreign Ministry says the Kremlin’s decision to promote General Dvornikov is the result of “his inability to unite and coordinate military activity”, which “prevents Russian invasion to date”. Speaking to Sky News, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peshkov was forced to admit “significant troop losses,” which in recent weeks have forced Russia to withdraw completely from the north of the country. Before Moscow abandoned its occupation of Kiev, Russian troops were organized into three separate groups, focusing on northern, southern and eastern Ukraine. Picture: The situation on the ground on the 49th day of the war That meant there were “essentially three competing field commanders,” Mark Galeotti, a senior fellow at defense think tank RUSI and author of We Need To Talk About Putin, told NBC News. “The advance of General Dvornikov is part of a broader reform in which Russia will stop trying to fight on three fronts and instead focus on ‘another attack to try to occupy the rest of Donbass,’” she said. “More reasonable and achievable goal”. General Dvornikov is not a “random choice,” Viktorija Starych-Samuoliene, co-founder of the Geostrategy Council, told Sky News. “In Russia he is well known as one of the leading candidates to become the next Chief of General Staff.” His tactic in Syria, which aimed to “populate the population”, is now being played in Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port city, he added. Image: Satellite imagery reveals Mariupol aerial bombing in southern Ukraine “The appointment of General Dvornikov is important primarily in two respects,” he said. “Firstly, it indicates a new phase of the war in Ukraine with the primary aim of effectively and successfully taking over and keeping parts of the Donbass region of Ukraine under Ukrainian control at any cost. “Second, because of its horrific ‘record’ in Syria, it potentially signals even greater barbarism against civilians, critical infrastructure and indifference to the laws of war.”
