Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new commander in Ukraine to lead the forces in the east. This comes after the failure of the previous operation to conquer the capital city of Kyiv.
“It speaks to a Russian acknowledgment that it is going extremely badly and they need to do something differently,” the European official said.
Dvornikov, 60, was the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria when President Vladimir Putin dispatched soldiers to the country in September 2015 to support Syrian President Bashar al-regime. Assad’s During Dvornikov’s leadership in Syria, from September 2015 to June 2016, Russian planes assisted the Assad regime and its allies as they laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, bombing heavily populated areas and killing a large number of civilians. In December 2016, Syrian government troops took control of the city.
“We will see how effective that proves to be,” the European official said. “The Russian doctrine, the Russian tactics remain pretty much as they’ve been since Afghanistan.”
“They do things in the same old way,” the official added.
Russian forces have carried out missile strikes in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday.
“During the night in the village of Zvonetske — Dnipropetrovsk region — high-precision sea-based missiles destroyed the headquarters and base of the Dnipro nationalist battalion, where reinforcements from foreign mercenaries arrived the other day,” Russian defense ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.
“High-precision air-launched missiles in the area of the settlement of Stara Bohdanivka, Mykolaiv region and at the Chuhuiv military airfield [in Kharkiv region] destroyed launchers of Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems identified by reconnaissance.”