This was reported by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
"By the decision of the Minister of Defense, General Sergey Surovikin has been appointed as the commander with the Joint Group of Forces in the area of the special military operation," the message reads.
Surovikin will turn 66 on October 11. He was born in Novosibirsk.
Since 2017, he has headed the Russian Air and Space Forces.
The general of the aggressor country's army, Sergey Surovikin, is known for the fact that he forcibly suppressed the speeches of opponents of Ukraine's Communist Party in August 1991 and, before the war with Ukraine, participated in punitive operations against the peoples of Chechnya and Syria.
Sergey Surovikin
It was Surovikin, in the rank of captain, who commanded the convoy of BMP, under the wheels of which peaceful protesters Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krychevsky and Vladimir Usov were killed on the night of August 20 to 21, 1991 in Moscow.
In 1995, the military court of the Moscow Garrison sentenced Surovikin to one year of conditional imprisonment for the illegal sale of weapons and munitions.
However, these circumstances did not prevent Sergey Surovikin from making a successful career in the Russian army, because he showed himself on the right side for the Kremlin during the war with the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and opponents of the dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
At the same time, today's appointment of Surovikin is approved by the head of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, better known as "Putin's cook".
"Of course, I am familiar with him. Surovikin is the most competent commander in the Russian army. But he can act in the current situation, based on the opportunities that he has and relying on the situation that was handed down to him by his predecessors, and it was handed down, to put it mildly, not in the best way," Prigozhin wrote on Telegram.
In addition, he approves the killing of peaceful demonstrators by a general (then captain) in 1991
"In August 1991, Surovikin did not have time to load a full set of ammunition into his tank. And if he had time, we would live in a completely different country, ten times more powerful... So Surovikin is the best," the owner of the Wagner PMC added.