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Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
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Zoya Sheftalovich
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