MOSCOW, Aug. 5 — In the corridors of the Russian defence ministry, the name Aleksandr Lapin has long divided opinion. Now, more than two years after his elevation to the Armed Forces’ highest post, the 56-year-old army general remains the quiet, controversial figure at the centre of a war Moscow cannot seem to win. Lapin was named Chief of the General Staff on May 12, 2024, replacing Valery Gerasimov in a quiet reshuffle that nonetheless spoke volumes.
Against this backdrop of stagnant territorial gains and heavy losses, President Vladimir Putin appeared to be reaching for a commander with battlefield experience rather than a staff theoretician. The signal was plain: centralise command, tighten control, and hope a veteran of Chechnya and Syria could do what his predecessors could not.
From the Central Military District to the front lines
Lapin’s path to the top was forged in the mud of Ukraine’s northern and eastern fronts. As commander of the Central Military District, he oversaw operations in those regions during the 2022 invasion, and he was involved in the initial planning of the campaign itself — including the failed push toward Kyiv that became one of the war’s first and most consequential embarrassments for the Kremlin. Later, he led forces in the Kharkiv and Donetsk sectors, where the offensive ground to a halt.
The record was not enough to protect him. In 2022, Lapin was briefly sidelined after a very public attack from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late Wagner Group leader, who accused him of incompetence during the retreat from Lyman in October of that year.
For a while, it looked as though the general’s career had stalled. But Putin’s Russia has a habit of resurrecting the fallen, and Lapin was reinstated. He went on to play a role in the 2023 offensive in the Donbas, including the capture of Bakhmut — a city reduced to rubble at a cost that still staggers Western observers.
That rehabilitation was the prelude to his 2024 promotion. The message to the officer corps, in the corridors and beyond, was unmistakable: loyalty and combat seasoning matter more than a flawless record.
An untested stewardship
For all his decades of service, Lapin’s ability to deliver results at the very top remains untested. His appointment was widely read as an attempt to impose a tighter, more centralised command structure on a military that has lurched from crisis to crisis. Yet the structural problems that plagued Gerasimov’s tenure have not disappeared.
Low morale, high casualty rates, and chronic logistical shortages continue to gnaw at the Russian armed forces, and the war effort has long since lost the momentum it briefly enjoyed in the opening weeks of 2022. Western estimates have suggested that more than 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since February 2022 — a figure that, while impossible to verify independently, has shaped the cautious calculus of every European defence ministry.
What is at stake now is not merely the fate of individual commanders, but the wider picture of a military that has bled itself white for a handful of ruined cities.
What to watch
Lapin may hold the title, but his hold on the machinery of the Russian General Staff is less certain. The army he commands is exhausted, its officer corps thinned by losses and purges, and its supply lines perpetually strained. In the coming months, the question is whether Putin’s chosen general can actually impose order on a fractured war effort — or whether, like Lyman before it, the front will slip once again from his grasp.
