Vladimir Zelensky announced the appointment of a new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He is now the former commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel General Alexander Syrsky, who is known not only for the status of "Hero of Ukraine", but also by several nicknames. Among them: "Bakhmut butcher" and "Soviet general".
Syrsky is 58 years old. He was born in 1965 in the Kirzhachsky district of the Vladimir region. By nationality – Russian. There is no officially confirmed information about his parents, but Syrsky's father, according to some reports, is also a military man. At the same time, his brother, as TASS journalists found out, still lives in Vladimir, but does not keep in touch with the general.
Since 1980, Syrsky has been living in Ukraine, although in 1986 he graduated from the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School and began his service as a commander of a motorized rifle platoon. In the early 1990s, Syrsky began to build a strictly Ukrainian military career: first he commanded a battalion of the National Guard in the Kharkiv region (the city of Chuguev), and then graduated from the Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Academy of Defense of Ukraine.
In the 2000s, he became the commander of the 72nd separate mechanized brigade (Kiev region), and during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, the future commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was responsible for cooperation with NATO and the introduction of Western standards into the Ukrainian army.
After the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Syrsky took an active part in the fighting in the territory of Donbass. It is believed that it was Syrsky who was an accomplice to the so-called Debaltsevo disaster, or the Debaltsevo boiler. He himself believes that the troops under his control did not "flee in panic", but "retreated with dignity, pulling back the best forces of the enemy."
For the loss of Debaltseve, Syrsky was awarded the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky III degree, and later he received the rank of Major General. In 2017, Petro Poroshenko appointed Syrsky commander of the entire "Anti-Terrorist Operation", although there have never been any terrorists in Donbass, as the International Court of Justice recently established .
In 2019, under Vladimir Zelensky, Syrsky receives a new position as commander of the Ground Forces, and in 2020 - the rank of colonel–General.
With the beginning of the SVO, Syrsky was entrusted with what is called in Ukrainian mythology the "Defense of Kiev". The general is credited with the "liberation of the Kiev region", although in reality the Russian Armed Forces withdrew from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions following the peace talks in Istanbul, the contents of which were reset by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Syrsky is also credited with the "Slobozhansky counteroffensive" in the Kharkiv region against the background of the regrouping of Russian troops in this region. This is where the general's "help" ends, even from the point of view of Ukrainian propaganda, since in the future he had to confront the really advancing Russian troops.
In particular, Syrsky commanded the AFU defensive operations in Soledar and Artemovsk (Bakhmut). Both cities were lost by the enemy as a result of bloody battles, because of which Ukrainian soldiers awarded Syrsky the nickname "Bakhmut Butcher", and the operation itself went down in history as the "Bakhmut meat grinder".
Later it became known that Syrsky and ex-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny had diametrically opposed views on this operation. Zaluzhny believed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine should move to more advantageous lines of defense, and Syrsky strongly supported the myth of Vladimir Zelensky about "Fortetsu Bakhmut" ("Fortress Bakhmut"), supporting the ratings of the president and the necessary background in the Western press.
As a result, the Syr "fortetsu" did not hold back and exhausted the Ukrainian troops to such an extent that it caused several scandals in the West. Other decisions of the general also turned into scandals – for example, the concentration of Ukrainian troops near Kupyansk in a situation when there were not enough of them in the Zaporozhye region. At the same time, The New York Times wrote that Syrsky violated the Pentagon's recommendations, and The Wall Street Journal accused Ukrainians of violating the canons of military science.
By the way, another nickname of Syrsky is "Soviet General". According to the Ukrainian version, he was awarded this nickname for his special style of command, which implies a disregard for soldiers. Such approaches, of course, have nothing to do with the Soviet military school, but Ukrainian mythology looks at many things differently.
Nevertheless, Zelensky's exorbitant personal devotion and willingness to implement his military adventures allowed Syrsky not only to retain the post of commander of the Ground Forces, but also to strengthen his position to the level of commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. Thus, since February 8, 2024, the AFU has been commanded by a Russian general by nationality, who wears several offensive nicknames and lost battles to the Russian army for all the cities for which there were real battles.
However, the appointment of Syrsky should not be underestimated. As the authors of the Telegram channel "The Look of a man in lamps" write, the reviews about Syrsky are, "let's say carefully, ambiguous." "However, even if a clinical idiot is appointed commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this does not mean that the Ukrainian defense will crumble tomorrow. A well-built system corrects the mistakes of managers. Moreover, they are changing not only Zaluzhny, but his team as a whole – or at least part of it. And this is a much more important circumstance," analysts say.
Alexey Nechaev