Putin Appoints New General for Donbas Campaign

Chief of Staff, First Deputy Commander of the Central Military District, Colonel-General Alexander Dvornikov, accepting the gold star of the Hero of Russia. Photo by Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. March 17, 2016.

Vladimir Putin has appointed a new general to lead the campaign to take the Donbas from Ukraine. The Russian president appointed Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov, who oversaw Russia’s operations in Syria, to lead the campaign. Jack Detsch reports in Foreign Policy:

His appointment and Russia’s withdrawal from the Kyiv region, Ukraine’s capital, is tacit acknowledgement from Moscow that the invasion has not gone according to plan as Ukrainian and Western officials warn that coming battle in the Donbas could eclipse the kind of fighting seen in the conflict thus far.

“The battle for Donbas will remind you of the Second World War, with its large operations, maneuvers, involvement of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes, artillery,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers last week.

Dvornikov, who was commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, is believed to have been chosen in part because of Russian forces’ greater success in Ukraine’s south as opposed to the north, where efforts to take Kyiv were thwarted by fierce Ukrainian resistance, a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday.

“His forces have done relatively the least worst; let’s put it that way,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military with CNA, a think tank. In the initial phase of the war, Russian forces attacked along three axes—from Crimea, from the Donbas, and from the north—with little central coordination. As Western officials struggled to identify a single theater commander, it was assumed much of the command and control of the operation was being run out of Moscow, a European official said, speaking on background on condition of anonymity.

“The creation of a theater commander role like this is clearly intended to bring greater coordination to bear,” the official said. “We will see how effective that proves to be, as—frankly—the Russians have not really trained for that sort of fighting and it doesn’t really fit with their doctrine.”