Who is Alexander Dvornikov?

Dvornikov has been overseeing troops in Ukraine’s south and east. He is in the running to replace Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, said Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London who studies Russia’s armed forces. He is known as “one of the real heavy hitters of his generation,” Galeotti said. Dvornikov was Russia’s first commander overseeing its brutal campaign in Syria, where Russian forces carried out widespread and indiscriminate bombardments of Syrian civilians, neighborhoods and hospitals in tandem with President Bashar al-Assad’s own air wars and sieges. Dvornikov was honored as a “hero of the Russian Federation” in 2016 for his work there. He has a history of “utter disregard” for avoiding harm to civilians, as well as the laws of war, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday. His tactics in Syria were brutal enough to earn him the nickname “the butcher of Syria.”

Why has he been appointed?

Following Russia’s withdrawal of troops from the suburbs of Kyiv, Western intelligence and defense agencies say Moscow is refocusing its efforts on capturing Ukraine’s south and east — where Dvornikov was already in command. The move comes after Russia’s initial efforts to capture Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine faltered in the face of stronger than expected resistance by Ukrainian forces, coupled with other factors including logistics failures and low morale among Russian soldiers, The Post has reported . Among the key obstacles has been “the lack of a single overall commander,” which “clearly hindered the cooperation of Russian forces,” according to an April 9 assessment by the Institute for the Study of War. “The designation of Dvornikov as the overall commander makes sense now given that the announced Russian main efforts are almost all in his area of responsibility,” ISW concluded. Before this change, Dvornikov was among two or three other commanders in charge of various fronts in Ukraine, according to ISW’s assessment. Galeotti said Dvornikov “is an interesting but not unexpected choice,” given his experience in the east and his reputation as an innovative commander and “someone who can cope with a new and unfamiliar situation.” “No appointment of any general can erase the fact that Russia has already faced a strategic failure in Ukraine,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “ This particular general has a résumé that includes brutality against civilians in other theaters in Syria. And we can expect more of the same in this theater.”

What did he do in Syria?

Dvornikov supervised Russian forces during a critical time in the Syrian war — when in 2015 it looked like Assad, a longtime ally, might not win against anti-government rebel groups that formed after Syria’s 2011 uprising descended into a civil war and proxy regional battles. Russia had one naval base in Syria before the war and supported Assad diplomatically from the start. Beginning in 2015, Moscow helped lead Assad’s air wars against Syrian cities and civilians, which turned the tide in Assad’s favor. The Syrian leader has since regained control of nearly all of the country, much of which remains deeply scarred by the Assad coalition’s scorched-earth tactics. It remains unknown how many people have died in Syria since 2011; estimates range from more than 300,000 to 600,000. But London-based Airwars , which monitors aerial bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Libya, found that nearly 25,000 Syrian civilians, according to local sources, are said to have been killed by Russian airstrikes between September 2015 and March 2022. “To date Russia has yet to publicly accept responsibility for the death of a single civilian during the campaign,” according to a recent report by the group . Many of the Russian tactics being seen in Ukraine — the use of cluster bombs, unrelenting bombardments of civilian areas, targeting hospitals and shelling an area and then returning to hit it again after emergency services respond — were part of Moscow’s playbook in Syria. The degree to which Dvornikov was the architect of these approaches is unknown. But the Russian general has also worked before with the Wagner Group, a murky network of Russian private security contractors active in Syria since 2015, which is also operating in Ukraine. Dvornikov in this capacity probably coordinated between Russian air attacks and Wagner fighters on the ground in Syria, said Fadel Abdul Ghany, executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights. In the battle to recapture the Syrian city of Palmyra, Galeotti said, Dvornikov demonstrated his belief in “the primacy of the mission, and if you need to go in hard to accomplish the mission, he will.” Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

Europe

What to know about Russia’s new top commander in Ukraine

By Miriam Berger

and

Bryan Pietsch

April 10, 2022 at 12:55 p.m. EDT

Russian President Vladimir Putin poses with Alexander Dvornikov in 2016. (Sputnik via Reuters)

Seven weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has appointed a new top commander, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, in a major reshuffle. He assumes oversight of the campaign amid mounting civilian deaths, widespread destruction and slow advances, with Russian forces mired in logistical problems and military blunders, according to Western officials and analysts.

Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Before his appointment, there had not been a single military leader for all Russian forces. This lack of cohesion could change under Dvornikov, a senior figure whose appointment a senior U.S. official confirmed to The Washington Post on Saturday.

The general had been commanding Russia’s southern military district, a key post he gained after serving as the first leader of the Russian air war campaign in Syria. Russia is accused of committing war crimes in both conflicts.

What is the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary entity in Ukraine?

Dvornikov has extensive experience in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Moscow says it will focus its war efforts after failing to seize Kyiv and suburbs surrounding the capital. There is much that remains unknown about the Russian military leader — but his experience in eastern Ukraine and his time in Syria are key elements of his background.

Here’s what to know about Dvornikov, Russia’s new war chief in Ukraine.

Russian general dubbed ‘butcher of Mariupol’ is a mystery to experts