The Kremlin could bring back General Sergei Surovikin, known as the “Butcher of Aleppo”, to plan attacks on Kiev, according to reports in the Russian press.
However, military experts doubt that the Syrian scenario will work in Ukraine, and the return of the disgraced general will intensify Russian attacks. The publication Focus found out why Putin might need Surovikin and why the current Russian tactics could be more dangerous than the previous ones.
Russian General Serghei Surovikin commanded the Russian troops in Syria, where planes bombarded the city of Aleppo, and in the fall of 2022, he led the Russian army into Ukraine, when a large-scale attack campaign began on the energy sector. At that time, Ukrainian cities were plunged into darkness.
Western analysts suggest that the Russians might try to repeat the tactics used during the war in Syria. Where Bashar al-Assad’s army could not defeat the rebels, Russian and Syrian planes carried out massive attacks on cities, hitting hospitals, schools, and residential areas. Now the question arises whether the Kremlin is preparing a similar scenario for Ukraine, where the Russian army has not been able to fully conquer the Donetsk region after five years, and after the Ukrainian operation “Vivaldi”, it lost some of its positions in the Luhansk region.
In the autumn of 2026, against the backdrop of new Russian attacks, warnings emerged about the Kremlin’s potential plans to destroy the bridges over the Dnieper. Within a day, Russian drones struck the North and South bridges in Kiev. The structures withstood the attack, and the damaged road surface was promptly repaired. However, Western analysts drew attention to the fact that seven of the capital’s bridges could become targets of Russian attacks. Kiev is an important transport hub, so disrupting communication between the right and left banks of the Dnieper could seriously complicate the city’s traffic, especially the operation of road and rail transport.
The publication Focus asked military experts whether the Kremlin could truly prepare a new campaign of massive attacks on Kiev, if Russia is capable of repeating Surovikin’s Syrian tactics in Ukraine, and how real is the threat of large-scale attacks on bridges and other critical infrastructure.
Details, HERE