The commander of the Russian grouping in Syria, 50-year-old Colonel-General Sergei Surovikin, will head VKS instead of Viktor Bondarev, who goes to the Federation Council, from October, RIA sources said on ThursdayNews"In the military department. According to sources, this information has already been brought to the leadership of the VKS.
"The Pathfinders" in aviation called "boots"
Among military pilots, the message about the possible appointment of Surovikin will be perceived with extreme irritation, a high-ranking reserve air force general told the VIEW newspaper.
“Surovikin never flew himself in his life, wore green shoulder straps all his life, which people with blue shoulder straps despise. He did not command any kind of troops entered into the VKS, and even did not stand next to them during his entire service. He did not study in the profile of any of the four former branches of the Armed Forces, which are now included in the videoconferencing system. To the Air Force headed by a man of motorized infantry? This never happened before, the source said. - Ground aviation in aviation is called "boots." Subordinates, of course, will carry out all the orders of Surovikin, but on the sly they will despise him. ”
The veteran of the war in Afghanistan, the former commander of the Air Force of the Baltic Military District of the USSR for Army Aviation, Major General Alexander Tsalko also perceives such an appointment without enthusiasm. "Not the best option, to be honest," he told the newspaper VIEW. “Maybe he is a good man. But in general, in an amicable way, it would be better for him to refuse this post. I would say that I do not understand in this matter. Do not sit in your sleigh - this is my position, ”he added.
“There are levels where the position is political, but the Minister of Defense and the Commander-in-Chief must be professionally prepared. Or at least listen to specialists, - said Tsalko. - This is absolutely special training should be: a pilot, preferably front-line aviation. An army commander, say, the past command levels of a regiment and division, is a person who will more or less competently manage. ”
Tsalko adds that with such assignments it happens that commanders have to train in elementary things. “The level is very high. He needs to delve into literally everything - the documents regulating flight work, combat training, life. So many features that he simply will not enter, ”the pilot explained.
In this regard, Tsalko noted: “The problem is that the combined-arms commander believes that he will receive certain knowledge with his appointment.” Recall, the commanding staff of such clans as the Navy, Airborne Forces and Military Space Forces (VVS), as a rule, are trained in specialized, rather than combined-arms military high schools.
“At the Zapad-81 exercises, the late General Valentin Varennikov twice dismissed me from the post of regiment commander because I did not allow the crew to fly in the fog. There are plenty of such cases when incompetent pressure is put on. It happens that even people die because of this incompetence. And such a commander in chief will have a problem. Will he be able to obey his profile deputies or not? I am afraid that it is not always "
- the general complained. Tsalko noted that if we take army aviation, which was repeatedly transferred from the Air Force to the ground forces and vice versa, the “paradox is that even some pilots began to incompetently command army aviation.”
“The military are bonded people. You suffer where you go. What will they show him in the pocket? Will execute commands. If there are bad teams, they will evade them, ”he explained.
The general is sure that few in Sukukin’s appointment in VKS will cause enthusiasm: “It’s not a flight envy. The fact is that a person does not understand. ”
A high-ranking source of the newspaper VIEW in the Russian Air Force recalls: each branch of service and branch of the armed forces has its own professional language for orders and instructions. It is with the help of this language that the generals set combat tasks to their subordinates, and for tank crews, the setting of the task sounds fundamentally different from that of sailors or pilots. The general-tanker simply does not know what words and concepts to make this or that order for, say, an air squadron. If only because of the appointment of General Surovikin, the VKS can expect problems with the management of forces.
New commander can attack fast
Whether it is a coincidence or not, it is not clear yet, but the appointment of Surovikin became known the next morning after the good news came from Syria - our troops were able to quickly break through the militant circle, which on Tuesday got a platoon of the Russian military police in Idlib province. 29 of the Russian military were freed from the encirclement. General Surovikin, by the way, the creator of the Russian military police, managed to organize the deblokad operation with lightning speed.
But Tsalko is sure: success in Syria is a common merit, after all, Surovikin is not the first commander of the group, and he headed the group quite recently, in June. “This is not the person who came to Syria at the most difficult time and took it all. He came to the farm that works, ”the source stressed.
In Syria, the commander has deputies in the areas. “There is a deputy for aviation, who gives him professional advice,” stressed Tsalko. According to him, the commander consults on how to act in each case. At the same time, Tsalko stressed, the deputy for aviation is protected by the fact that he is subordinate in parallel to the commander-in-chief of the VKS - that is, in case of disagreement he can turn to his own commander-in-chief.
The combat path began in the August coup.
Sergey Surovikin was born in Novosibirsk in 1966 year. In 1987, he graduated from the Omsk Higher Command Military School with a gold medal, in 1995, with honors - the Frunze Military Academy, and in 2002, also with distinction - the Academy of the General Staff.
For the first time, Surovikin got into the media field as a young captain. In the days of the August putsch of 1991, the battalion of the Taman Division under his command sent to patrol the center of Moscow, precisely during the incident with the BMP of his battalion on the Garden Ring and three young men were killed. Surovikin was arrested, but the charges against him were eventually dropped, as he was only following orders. Moreover, under the personal orders of Yeltsin, he was promoted to the rank.
From 1995, he was sent to Tajikistan, where he made his way from the battalion commander to the chief of staff of the division. In 2002, he was appointed commander of the 34 Simferopol Motorized Rifle Division. In 2004, he fought in Chechnya, after which he commanded the 20-th Guards Combined Arms Army. Then there was the deputy chief of the General Staff and the chief of staff of the Central Military District. Prior to his appointment in Syria, he led the Defense Ministry’s working group on the creation of a military police and then commanded the troops of the Eastern Military District.
Another noisy incident with Surovikin occurred while he was studying at the Frunze Academy - in 1995, he was sentenced to a year of imprisonment for wearing weapons and ammunition. However, it later turned out that he was framed and his conviction was lifted. In 2004, Surovikin's subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Tsybizov, accused the head of beating for political reasons, but then he himself took the statement from the prosecutor's office.
In the same year, a tragic incident occurred - right in the presence of the division commander Surovikin in his presence his deputy for armaments Colonel Andrei Shtakal shot himself.
The new commander will be based on the profile deputies
The editor-in-chief of the Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, Viktor Murakhovsky, suggests waiting for the official appointment of the new commander in chief. But in general, he does not see anything unusual in the fact that a general-arms general will lead a "foreign" type of military. “VKS is becoming an interspecific structure that includes many types of troops and works in the interests of all the armed forces, and not only in airspace,” Murakhovsky told the newspaper VIEW.
The expert recalled that Surovikin previously commanded the Eastern Military District: "This is also one of the largest interspecific operational units, which included the fleet, air force, air defense and all other branches of troops in the east of the country."
Murakhovsky noted that the new commander-in-chief will command different types of troops, in particular Long-Range Aviation and the Air Force itself, operational-tactical aviation, and he already has such experience. After all, the grouping in Syria includes air defense, ground forces and special operations forces. Periodically appear off the coast of Syria and the forces of the Navy, which are operatively subordinate to the commander at the time of presence. Murakhovsky credits Surovikin with the success of the Russian aviation group in Syria.
The training of flight personnel and the use of aviation will be handled by certain people, Murakhovsky explained: for example, the deputy commander-in-chief for aviation. The use of various types of troops is planned by a special headquarters. “The commander-in-chief of the VKS is now the person who organizes the training and combat use of interspecific weapon systems operating in the air and in space,” he explained. The expert does not expect any indignation from the pilots of the VKS new appointment. “Those who are indignant in the army are retiring,” he concluded.
As you know, the military are conservative and do not like change. Similar misinterpretations were heard in the officer corps in the spring of 2004, when Anatoly Serdyukov, a tax service official distant from the army, was appointed defense minister. Since his official biography included the position of director of a furniture store, many officers initially called him Taburetkin.
However, over time, Serdyukov became up to date and even launched a large-scale reform. On the eve of the "five-day war" almost no one remembered his furniture past. And the reforms begun by him forever changed the appearance of our army, and after years even many of his critics admit that the reforms were in many ways correct.