Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed his ‘most bloodthirsty general’ to command Russian land forces in a stark warning to the West amid fears of coming territorial attacks on NATO states.
Colonel General Andrey Mordvichev, 49, was appointed as overnight strikes by Russian and Ukrainian forces stepped up ahead just hours before expected face-to-face peace talks in Istanbul.
Putin’s forces hit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in a drone strike, and hit Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops in the southern Donetsk region, also claiming to destroy an ammunition store at Zolotyi Kolodiaz in the same region.
Some 50 shells were fired at Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk region, damaging a kindergarten, a school, a church, two houses and cars.
Putin fired his long-time commander-in-chief of Russian ground forces Oleg Salyukov, ahead of his 70th birthday.
His replacement, Mordvichev, killed tens of thousands of his own men in the Kremlin’s operation to capture the blitzed town of Avdiivka in Ukraine.
The cost in Avdiivka, for which he was made a Hero of Russia, was immense.
Some 16,000 to 17,000 Russian troops were killed and around 30,000 wounded from his cannon fodder advances, in contrast to Ukraine’s losses of between 5,000 and 7,000.
The death toll in the 2023-24 Avdiivka operation was more than the Soviet Army lost in a decade of fighting in the USSR’s notorious occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Mordvichev’s appointment comes amid fears that any pause in the Ukraine conflict will see Putin engineer combat operations against NATO states.
Dutch military intelligence chief Vice-Admiral Peter Reesink warned recently: ‘Russia is producing much more artillery, also with help from other countries, than they need for the war with Ukraine.’
Putin is not only replenishing depleted stockpiles but moving new artillery units toward NATO borders, including the Baltic countries and Finland, he told Politico, adding: ‘That’s an indication for us that they are building up capability.’
And a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) found that Russia could attack NATO as soon as 2027 if a Ukrainian ceasefire is agreed this year.
The report said if a ceasefire is agreed, and if Trump withdraws from NATO and focuses more on China, European allies can’t assume the ‘US will provide the necessary military support to defend the continent against Russian aggression’.
‘Were US forces to disengage from the European theatre from mid-2025, Europe’s window of vulnerability would open quickly,’ it added.
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