Covered with medals and at the top of the military hierarchy for ten years, the Russian general Valéri Guerassimov has been appointed commander of the offensive in Ukraine, a perilous position after an exemplary career.
The choice of the chief of staff to lead this military operation, an unusual practice, comes after several disappointments for the forces in Moscow, between setbacks and heavy losses in a strike at the end of December.
The Ministry of Defense justified this appointment on Wednesday by “enlarging the scope of the missions to be accomplished” and “the need for closer interaction between the components of the armed forces”.
A man of few words in public, Valéri Guerassimov, 67, appears regularly, his face closed in his green uniform, listening to Vladimir Putin during maneuvers or meetings on military operations.
Since November 2012, he has served as Chief of Staff, the highest post in the army after that of Minister of Defence.
At the time of his appointment, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu presented Valéri Guerassimov as a “soldier to the root of his hair” and already having “colossal experience” within the high command and in the field.
Mr. Gerasimov “built the army. He has been preparing Russia for this war (in Ukraine) for ten years. Now he has to prove that he didn’t do it for nothing,” a Russian analyst told AFP, on condition of anonymity, stressing that the general was a real professional soldier, unlike Mr. Shoigu who comes of the civilian.
On her Telegram account, Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann believes that her promotion is “a victory for the regular forces” of the army in growing competition, on the Ukrainian front, with the “pirates” of the paramilitary group Wagner.
General Guerasimov replaces Sergei Surovikin, who had been praised by Wagner’s leader, Evgeny Prigojine, and by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who also sent his own army to fight in Ukraine.
But other observers, such as the influential Russian military blogger Rybar, note that Valery Gerasimov, despite his brilliant record of service, could now act as a “lightning rod” and jump in the event of further setbacks.
Chechnya, “hybrid war”
Born in 1955, belonging to the same generation as Vladimir Putin, General Guerassimov, originally from the Republic of Tatarstan, has climbed all the ranks of the hierarchy since leaving a battle tank school in 1977.
Commander of a motorized division between 1993 and 1995, he then led the 58e army engaged in the second war in Chechnya, initiated in 1999 by Vladimir Putin and which resulted in the reconquest of this territory of the Caucasus by Moscow.
During this conflict, the journalist Anna Politkovskaïa, assassinated in 2006, had affirmed that General Guerassimov had known how to “preserve his honor as an officer” by going himself to arrest a Russian colonel accused of having kidnapped and murdered a Chechen. A case that caused a stir.
French General Pierre de Villiers, Chief of the Defense Staff between 2014 and 2017, told the BFMTV television channel that Valéri Guerassimov, then his counterpart, “recognized only one thing, the balance of power”.
“Not the element of language, not the loudness of voice, the balance of power, the real one,” he added.
In Western observer circles, Valery Gerasimov is often described as the father of a doctrine defining “hybrid warfare”, involving conventional and unconventional forces.
If the official existence of this doctrine and the presumed role of Valéri Guerassimov are highly disputed, the Russian general noted in 2013 “a tendency to erase the border between the state of peace and the state of war”.
“Wars are no longer declared and, once they have started, do not follow a normal trajectory”, he added, underlining the growing importance of “non-military means”.
The following year, in 2014, Crimea was annexed by Moscow and a conflict began between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists taking advantage of Moscow’s unofficial support, an example for experts of this “hybrid war”.