Who is General Surovikin and what is his line of defense against the Ukrainian counterattack?

The former head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence agency, Rainer Sachs, this week admitted the harsh reality that the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their counter-offensive in the south was due to the “large number of defensive structures” of the Russian army.

He admitted that the Ukrainian army had deployed even its most capable and well-equipped mobile units trained by the Western Alliance, but these units were still unable to achieve strategic goals ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius next month.

What are these goals?

Although Ukraine has not made any official announcement, US media and Washington think tanks believe that the main goals are to cut off the "land bridge" connecting Russia with the Crimean peninsula in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, blockade the peninsula and continue to attack deep into Russian territory.

The offensive now appears to have stalled: Ukrainian forces are losing hundreds of soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles every day. Last week, President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine had lost 186 tanks and 418 armored vehicles in the campaign.

Russia's strategy to stop Ukraine's attack

In addition to the courage and determination of the Russian army, there is also the “Surovikin defense line” - a term first used by the British media in late 2022 in connection with the construction of a defensive line consisting of many fortified positions, with many layers of defense under the leadership of Russian general Sergei Surovikin, who served as commander-in-chief of the Joint Forces Group in the special military operation area from October 2022 to January 2023. The “Surovikin defense line” is credited with stopping the Ukrainian offensive.

Who is General Surovikin?

General Surovikin, 56, served for nearly 40 years in the Soviet and Russian armies, and since 2017 has been the commander-in-chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces. A veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where he served as a special forces officer, he also commanded the Second Chechen War in the 2000s and in Syria in the 2010s. General Surovikin's effective and successful actions on the battlefield have led to him being dubbed "General Armageddon" by the Western media for his "brutal tactics" in the wars.

What does Surovikin's line of defense consist of?

For obvious reasons, the Russian military does not provide details about the composition of its defensive positions. However, media reports and analysis suggest that the defenses are a multi-layered network of trenches, minefields, “dragon teeth” (meter-high concrete structures designed to stop enemy armored vehicles) and elevated earthen ramparts to shelter military equipment. The defenses stretch nearly 2,000 kilometers through Kherson and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk and the Russian regions bordering Ukraine to the north, visible to military planners in Kiev in part thanks to NATO’s extensive satellite network monitoring the situation on the battlefield.

However, Kiev's ability to destroy this infrastructure is limited by several factors:

1. Russia has absolute air superiority;

2. The ability to attack Russian fortifications with artillery and missiles is limited due to the constant threat of Russian air and artillery counterattacks;

3. Russia effectively uses "camouflage" tactics, including the use of fake equipment, decoys, disinformation and deception operations to distract and confuse the enemy;

4. A huge system of military fortifications running from Kherson in the south to Russia's border with Belarus in the north.