Drastic decision taken by General Sîrskîi, faced with the advance of the Russians on the front. Two commanders from the top of the army, dismissed
December 6, 2024, Kiev, Ukraine: President Volodimir Zelenski and the supreme commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, the general colonel Oleksandr Sîrskîi, visits an exhibition where the new Peklo rockets were presented in Ukraine. Photo: Tarasov / Zuma Press / Profimedia
The head of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Oleksandr Sîrskîi, fired Volodimir Silenko and Maksim Kituhin, commanders of Corps 17 and, respectively, Army, writes on Monday, September 15, Ukrainska Pravda, citing, under the protection of anonymity, two military sources.
These are the first high -level personnel changes since President Volodimir Zelenski announced, on February 3, that the Ukrainian armed forces will move to a structure based on army bodies, against the background of scandals that have affected the leading leadership of Kiev troops.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, both commanders were dismissed one or two weeks ago, due to the losses suffered on the battlefield in the areas under their command.
Corps 17, led by Silenko, was responsible for the sector on the front line south of Zaporojie, where the Ukrainian forces recently lost control over the village of Kamianske and were partially driven from Plavni, both along the Dnieper river.
Kituhin's 20 army body was dislocated along the border between Donetk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, which the Russian forces crossed in August, when they first succeeded since the beginning of the war in Dnipropetrovsk province.
Why fails to reform the Ukrainian army
The Ukrainian army has been passing over six months through a slow and problems with problems to an army system, notes The Kyiv Independent.
The military reform in progress aims to introduce an command structure at the army level, above the brigade level, to improve the coordination and operational control between the larger units.
The change involves the gradual elimination of the operational-strategic, operational-tactical and tactical groups in favor of a simplified control system.
The main obstacle in the formation of efficient structures at the Army Corps level is the requirement that the subordinated brigades operate in a single sector of the front line, which allows the commanders to maintain direct control.
In practice, due to the overloaded character of the Ukrainian army over hundreds of kilometers of front line and the lack of strategic reserves to facilitate the reorganization of the units sectors, this condition has not been met in many cases, and several army bodies remained partially formed.
Most newly formed bodies are currently concentrated in the areas supervised by the “Donetk” Tactical Tactical group, where the situation on the front line remains difficult.
At the beginning of August, the Corps 1 Command of the National Guard took over the defense of the front sector at Dobropillia after the Russian forces advanced about 10 kilometers (6 miles) in the depth of the Ukrainian territory.
However, taking over the defense from that sector spent without the physical transfer of all the units of the body 1, most of them remaining in the sectors in which they fought previously.
Further north, the famous 3 assault brigade of Ukraine was more successful in the formation of a cohesive body structure in its responsibility area, between the cities of Lîman and Borova, the publication from Kiev quoted.
