The war in Ukraine has not gone according to Putin’s plan so far. Now he turns everything upside down and appoints a supreme commander for the Ukraine war for the first time. A new phase in the Ukraine war begins with Alexander Dwornikov. The signal is that Putin wants to declare victory at all costs.
At the end of March, Russia introduced a new military strategy. The official line is now that the “special operation” in Ukraine is proceeding according to plan, but that from now on the Russian armed forces will concentrate more on one goal: the “liberation” of the Donbass. Since then, troops have been withdrawn from the greater Kyiv area and more battalions are being transferred to the eastern front. The new goal is now to be achieved under the leadership of one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite generals: the so-called “Butcher of Syria”.
Alexander Dvornikov is one of the most experienced generals in the Russian army and also one of the most brutal, according to US defense experts. “He was a real commander, very serious – and proud of the Russian army and its military history”, a commander of a Christian Syrian militia who wished to remain anonymous told the New York Times. “He didn’t sleep much but spent long hours exercising. He is very organized and has a good memory.”
Dvornikov is described as an “old school” general and a “blood and soil nationalist” writes the Guardian. According to the newspaper, he was trained under Soviet military doctrines, which view the destruction of civilian targets as a means of gaining momentum on the battlefield. He joined the Red Army in 1978 and was also stationed in East Germany at the beginning of the 1990s.
Now he is supposed to deliver a victory to the Russian President. Putin chose Dvornikov for the post with good reason, given his experience in salvaging lost wars. In 2015 he was the driving force behind Russia’s operation in Syria. After Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad lost city after city to rebels, Russia officially entered the war. Led by Dvornikov, the Russian army secured Assad’s power.
“Hero of Russia”
His strategy in Syria should be a model for the coming weeks in Ukraine. It can be summed up in one word: brutal. “Bashar al-Assad is not the only one who should be held accountable for the killing of civilians in Syria – the Russian general should too,” Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the New York Times. “As commander of military operations, he was behind the killing of Syrian civilians by giving the orders.”
After his arrival in Syria, Dwornikov quickly set up an air force base from which large, war-defining bombing raids were flown. The fall of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, was largely due to Russian airstrikes. The targets were regularly hospitals, schools and other facilities of civilian life – including queues. The destruction of the city was largely coordinated from this base, by Dvornikov himself.
For this he received the highest praise from Putin. For his service in Syria, the Russian President awarded him the “Hero of Russia” medal, one of the country’s highest honors. Russia lost very few troops and planes in this war and was able to maintain air supremacy throughout.
Putin is now sending the best into battle
In Syria, Dvornikov entered the war when Assad was on the brink of defeat. Today, Russia finds itself in a similar situation: Russian troops have not made as much progress in Ukraine as Putin might have initially thought. Officially, this disappointment was not expressed. But experts see the reshuffle as a sign that the Kremlin boss is dissatisfied with the course of the war. “It speaks for a Russian admission that things are going extremely badly and that they have to do something differently,” the US broadcaster CNN quoted a European source as saying.
So far there has been no supreme commander in the Ukraine war. Exchange and communication beyond the brigade level were therefore difficult. This is most evident in the example from Kyiv, where a military convoy got stuck for days, partly because communication with other brigades didn’t work. “We see that they have some difficulties in leadership and control,” said a senior US defense official in late March. He cited the inability of the Russian armed forces to coordinate air and ground attacks and, in some cases, to communicate effectively.
That is exactly what Dwornikov wants to change. Experts assume that the new strategy in the east will no longer be managed by individual offensive leaders, but by him centrally. True, the Russian force he led in Syria was far smaller than the one now deployed in eastern Ukraine. But the situation in Syria was more complicated: he had to coordinate groups ranging from Assad’s army to small allied militias like Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese militia.
“A Dangerous Sign”
However, there are major differences between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in Syria. The rebels and other opponents of Assad were not prepared for an air war. The first years of the civil war were fought on the ground and in the streets of the cities from house to house – they were well trained in that. When Putin’s air force stepped in and bombed the cities, the rebels had no anti-aircraft missiles to deploy.
Things are different in Ukraine today. Russia has still not achieved air sovereignty there. Although the Russian army has a much larger and better equipped air force, Russian fighter jets are systematically shot down by Ukrainian forces. The anti-aircraft tanks supplied by the West are often used successfully.
Nevertheless, a pattern similar to that in Syria can already be observed in Ukraine. Cities like Mariupol have been reduced to rubble since the beginning of the war – owithout regard to civilians, critical infrastructure, electricity, water and food supplies. All of this will only intensify with Dvornikov at the helm.
“The appointment of Dvornikov is a dangerous sign that Putin has no intention of giving up on Ukraine any time soon, but may actually try to take most, if not all, of eastern Ukraine.” Harry Kazianis, a US military analyst with the Center for the National Interest, told Stern. “My fear is that if Dvornikov cannot take it, he has orders to turn eastern Ukraine into one giant Aleppo.”
After Bucha, Kramatorsk and Mariupol, it is difficult to imagine how the situation in Ukraine could get any worse. But with the appointment of Dvornikov, the war against Ukraine entered a new phase. Putin is signaling that he is willing to go much further than before to be able to declare victory.