MOSCOW: Russia has appointed a key commander of the gruelling siege of Mariupol,

, as head of the ground forces, the official newspaper of the Russian army reported Thursday.

Defence Minister Andrey Belousov described the 49-year-old general as “an experienced combat officer who fully demonstrated his talent as a military commander during the special military operation,” using Moscow’s term for its Ukraine offensive, according to the Red Star newspaper.

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Russian forces rolled into Mariupol, a bustling Black Sea coast city with a pre-war population of 540,000, in the first months of its assault in 2022 and imposed a brutal siege for nearly three months that resulted in 8,000 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch.

The city, which used to be an important hub for Ukraine’s grain trade, became Moscow’s biggest gain in its military campaign but two-thirds of its pre-war population has fled and the siege resulted in massive destruction.

Ukraine’s SBU security services accused Mordvichev of having spearheaded the siege of Azovstal, a large steel plant held by members of the Azov brigade, which has ties to far-right nationalist groups.

The plant was Kyiv’s final pocket of resistance in the city.

Ukraine sees Mordvichev as a war criminal, accusing him of overseeing atrocities against Ukrainian civilians and soldiers.

In February 2024, the general led the capture of Avdiivka, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine, following a bloody three-month assault. For this, he received a personal telegram of appreciation from Russian President

.

Mordvichev, born in Kazakhstan, has served in the Russian army since 1997 and has held various commanding positions since 2016.

His predecessor, Oleg Salyukov, 70, was removed by Putin last week and immediately appointed deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, an important advisory body that meets regularly with Putin.

Colonel General Andrei Mordvichev replaced General Oleg Salyukov in the role on Thursday,state-controlled Russian outlet Izvestia reported.

Deutsche Welle and several Russian outlets, including the government-published Rossiyskaya Gazeta,also reported the move. A list of official presidential decrees announced Salyukov’s departure, but has not yet confirmed that Mordvichev is the replacement.

The Institute for the Study of War said Friday that Mordvichev’s reported appointment represented an endorsement of his preference for “grinding, highly attritional, infantry-led assaults,”and said this suggested the Kremlin “aims to institutionalize these tactics.”

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Military analyst Yan Matveyev credited him as one of the main initiators of the approach, in a post to Telegram after the appointment was reported.

Mordvichev has previously said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “only the beginning.” In an interview with Russian state media in 2023, Mordvichev said that the war “will not stop here,” Newsweek reported at the time.

As deputycommander of the Central Military District, Mordvichev also presided over Russia’s capture of the coastal city of Mariupol in 2022, one of the war’s most brutal sieges.

After a months-long battle with Ukrainian troops which left thousands of civilians dead, Russia took siege of the city in April 2022, and has expanded its military footprint in the city since then, according to the BBC.The satellite photo shows the early aftermath of Russian airstrikes on the city’s infrastructure, including on the Mariupol theater, where an Associated Press investigation said that at least 600 people, including children, were killed in the March 19 airstrike. Outlined behind the building is lettering that says “CHILDREN,” indicating that kids were inside at the time of the strike. Business Insider USA

That battle, which is estimated to have killed more than 8,000 people, ended with Russian forces taking the Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian forces had held out for two months.

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Mordvichev is also credited with the capture of the strategically important city of Avdiivka in February 2024.

Ukrainian officials said that Russia lost more than 30,000 troops killed or wounded taking the city, using its infamous “meat grinder” approach of grinding down resistance with wave after wave of infantry attacks.

Mordvichev’s reputation has grown steadily, and he was embraced by Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, as “the best commander” during his promotion to head up the Central Military District last year, The Times of London reported.

In 2022, Ukraine claimed to have killed Mordvichev in an airstrike near Kherson, but he was later seen meeting with Kadyrov.

He is under multiple European sanctions, according to the sanctions database OpenSanctions.

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Salyukov, who became the ground forces commander in 2014, is a few days away from his 70th birthday, when he will age out of military service.

He’s being moved to a senior post on the Russian Security Council, per a presidential decree.

A provocative appointment during peace talks

The reported appointment came as the two sides met in Istanbul for peace talks.

The talks, which began Friday, were left to lower-level officials after Putin declined to attend in person. The Russian officials included many of those who carried out fruitless negotiations in Istanbul in 2022, according to ISW.

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May 16 (Reuters) – A colonel general dubbed “General Breakthrough” for distinguishing himself in key battles in Moscow’s more than three-year-old war in Ukraine has been appointed head of Russia’s land forces, the daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta said on Friday.

The government daily said Andrei Mordvichev was born in 1976 in what was then Soviet Kazakhstan and last year was decorated as a Hero of Russia, the country’s highest award.

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Mordvichev, previously head of the Central Military District, commanded operations that led to the 2022 surrender of Ukrainian units holding out in the Azovstal steelworks after a siege of about 80 days in the southern port of Mariupol.

In 2024, he led Russian troops capturing the mining centre of Avdiivka in Donetsk region on the war’s eastern front, a key operation in a town where Ukrainian authorities had for years built up fortifications.

Rossiiskaya Gazeta said he also led Russian forces in retaking three key towns in their slow advance westward through Donetsk region – Selydove, Kurakhove and Ukrainsk.

Earlier in his career, he had also taken part in conflicts in Syria.

Mordvichev takes over from army general Oleg Salyukov, replaced as head of ground forces on Thursday by a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.

Salyukov, 69, was appointed deputy secretary of the Security Council, the Kremlin’s top consultative body, chaired by Putin, and which is responsible for managing and integrating national security policy.

Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Sandra Maler

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