Kyiv (TIP): Moscow has named Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as new commander for its invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine said its troops were holding out despite heavy fighting on a battlefield littered with bodies in a salt mining town in eastern Ukraine, where Russian private military firm Wagner Group had claimed Moscow’s first significant gain in half a year.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on January 11 appointed Valery Gerasimov as the overall commander for what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, now in its 11th month.

The change effectively demoted General Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed in October to lead the invasion and oversaw heavy attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The ultra-nationalist contract militia Wagner, run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin outside the main chain of military command, claims to have taken Soledar after intense fighting that it said had left the town strewn with Ukrainian dead. But Moscow has held off officially proclaiming victory. “There are still some small pockets of resistance in Soledar,” Andrei Bayevsky, a Russian-installed politician, said in an online broadcast.

Ukraine has acknowledged Russian advances but Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar told a briefing on Thursday that fighting was still fierce. Malyar said Russia had increased the number of units in Ukraine to 280 from 250 in the past week as it seeks to regain the initiative. Kremlin-watchers were poring over Russia’s latest switch of battlefield leadership, a day after Valery Gerasimov, chief of the military’s general staff, was unexpectedly given direct command of the invasion. The previous commander of three months’ standing, Army General Sergei Surovikin, was effectively demoted to become one of Gerasimov’s three deputies. Russia explained the decision, third abrupt change of commander in the 11-month conflict, as a response to campaign’s growing importance. — Reuters