Colonel General Alexander Chaiko has been appointed the new Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS). He replaced Viktor Afzalov, who had headed the Aerospace Forces since 2023, in this post. Mr. Chaiko, a combined arms commander with experience in operations in Syria and Ukraine, most recently served as Deputy Chief of the General Staff. He became the fourth commander-in-chief in the ten-year history of the Aerospace Forces, and only the first, Viktor Bondarev, was a career pilot.
RBC reported the appointment of Alexander Chaiko as commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces on the morning of May 4, citing sources familiar with this personnel decision. A source close to the Ministry of Defense confirmed this information. The fact that the military leader headed the Aerospace Forces was also previously reported by the Fighterbomber Telegram channel. In this post, Mr. Chaiko replaced Colonel General Viktor Afzalov, who was appointed commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces in October 2023 after the resignation of Sergei Surovikin.
Alexander Chaiko was born in 1971 in the Moscow region, graduated from the Moscow Suvorov Military School and the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School. He began his service in the Western Group of Forces in Germany and the Moscow Military District, where he rose from platoon commander to battalion commander. Later he commanded formations and armies of the Western Military District, including the 1st Guards Tank Army, and also held positions in the General Staff.
The Syrian campaign played a significant role in his career. He participated in this operation since 2015, served as chief of staff of the Russian group, and then was twice appointed as its commander. During this period, General Chaiko was responsible, among other things, for coordinating actions with the Syrian and Iranian allies and for interaction with the Turkish military. For participation in the operation in 2020 he received the title of Hero of Russia.
At the time of the start of the special military operation in 2022, Alexander Chaiko held the post of commander of the Eastern Military District and, according to data from open sources, led one of the groupings of Russian troops in the Kiev direction. In the fall of the same year, he left this position in a series of personnel changes, and General Rustam Muradov became his successor. In December 2024, after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, General Chaiko was again mentioned as the commander of the Russian group in Syria and participated in organizing the group’s defense and evacuation of weapons and equipment. Since 2025, Alexander Chaiko served as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, but the exact date of this appointment was not disclosed.
Military bloggers assessed the new appointment of Alexander Chaiko ambiguously.
His colleagues in the Syrian campaign reacted rather positively, noting the general’s penchant for detailed work with subordinates and personal control over the implementation of tasks. At the same time, some military correspondents assess his qualities as a military leader based primarily on the results of the Kyiv operation in 2022, which ended with the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Since the creation of the Aerospace Forces in 2015, this type of troops has been alternately led by representatives of different military schools. Only the first commander-in-chief, Viktor Bondarev, was a career pilot, who was replaced by combined arms General Sergei Surovikin in 2017 (as was General Chaiko, who transferred to the Aerospace Forces from the Eastern Military District). Army General Surovikin, in turn, was succeeded by Viktor Afzalov, who had previously served in the air defense forces for a quarter of a century. The appointment of Alexander Chaiko also fits into this line, in which the key personal quality for the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces becomes not specialized training, but experience in managing large interspecific groups.
