Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Lieutenant General Volodymyr Kravchenko as the new top military commander in the war zone of the country’s eastern Donbas region.
On Aug. 5, Zelensky issued four decrees that removed the previous top officer, Lieutenant General Oleksandr Syrskiy, from leading the Joint Forces, the country’s 40,000-strong military contingent fighting Russian-backed militants in the region, and reappointed and replaced him.
The new commander Kravchenko is known to have received the rank of Lieutenant General in August 2018. Before his new assignment, he was in charge of the Armed Forces’ Operative Command North, which is responsible for defending the county’s central and northern oblasts, including the city of Kyiv.
His predecessor in Donbas, General Syrskiy, was appointed in early May by former President Petro Poroshenko, just two weeks before he transferred power to Zelensky on May 20. Now, Zelensky has promoted Syrskiy to the top leader of Ukraine’s Ground Forces.
The previous officer in this position, Colonel General Serhiy Popko, was dismissed with another decree.
The Ukrainian military campaign against Russian-backed forces in Donbas has continued since April 2014. Before late April 2018, it was conduced under the legal auspices of the “Anti-Terror Operation.” Later, it was transformed into the current “Joint Forces Operation” through changes to Ukrainian law.
Lieutenant General Volodymyr Kravchenko (Operative Command North Ukraine)
The formal end of the “Anti-Terror Operation” was a requirement of the controversial Donbas re-integration law, approved on Feb. 20, 2018. The law gives the Armed Forces (rather than the SBU security agency) the leading role in the war zone without requiring the government to declare martial law in the region.
All police and military formations deployed to the region are united as the Joint Forces under the unified command of a high-ranking military officer nominated by the General Staff of the Armed Forces and approved by the president.
Apart from the control of troops, the Joint Forces also receive expansive powers to regulate the security regime and freedom of movement for civilians in war-affected Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. However, the months following the start of the Joint Forces Operation saw almost no tangible changes for civilian life in the region.
The first military commander to be appointed to head the combined Ukrainian forces was Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, who occupied the position until May 2019.
According to the United Nations, as many as 13,000 people have been killed and nearly 30,000 injured in the hostilities in Donbas since Russia unleashed its proxy war in the region in spring 2014.
Of those killed, at least 4,000 are Ukrainian forces, according to the UN.
