Valery Gerasimov
Valery Gerasimov is a Russian military officer holding the rank of Army General. He has served as Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces since 2012 and, in that capacity, is the highest-ranking military officer in Russia after the supreme commander-in-chief. Previously he commanded the Central Military District and held senior positions within the General Staff. He is widely identified as a central figure in the planning and conduct of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
-
Russia's top general reports start of large-scale strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure
Russia's Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov told Vladimir Putin on 16 October that Russian forces had begun a campaign of massive strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities. The announcement came days after a US-brokered "energy ceasefire" and rounds of reciprocal strikes on energy and refinery targets. Energy infrastructure was hit in Kyiv and five oblasts, causing emergency outages, while Ukrainian energy workers restored power to more than one million consumers during the day.