General-Major Romanchuk
By the Defense Minister’s order dated 12 August, General-Major Aleksandr Vladimirovich Romanchuk became acting commander of the new combined arms army being formed in Chita. ITAR-TASS quoted a SibVO spokesman:
“The command and staff of the army, and also a number of army-subordinate formations and military units, will be formed under his leadership. Formations and military units based in Transbaykal Kray will comprise the army.”
The Chita Combined Arms Army (CAA) will be the easternmost large formation in the new Central Military District (MD), or Combined Strategic Command (OSK) Center. Who knows what number the new army will receive . . . maybe the former 29th CAA will be resurrected.
Romanchuk was born 15 April 1959 in Lugansk, Ukraine. He grew up in a military family in Azerbaijan. Commissioned out of the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1980, he served as a tank platoon and company commander, then chief of staff and deputy commander of a tank battalion in the Transcaucasus MD. He graduated from the Military Academy of Armored Troops in 1989 and, for a very short period, commanded an independent tank battalion in the Central Group of Forces (Czechoslovakia).
Returning home with the rest of Soviet forces, he became deputy commander and commander of a machine gun-artillery regiment in the Transbaykal MD during the 1990s. He was a colonel in his late 30s by the end of this phase of his career.
When the Transbaykal MD folded into the Siberian MD, Romanchuk became chief of an armaments and equipment storage base, and chief of staff and deputy commander of a Siberian MD tank division. He served a tour of duty in Chechnya during the late 1990s or early 2000s.
Between 2001 and 2003, he was deputy commander of the Guards Taman Motorized Rifle Division in the Moscow MD. He became commander of the 4th Guards Kantemir Tank Division in Naro-Fominsk at the end of 2003. He was promoted to general-major (one star) in mid-2005.
He likely attended the Military Academy of the General Staff between mid-2006 and mid-2008, and then became a deputy commander of the Novosibirsk-based 41st CAA. In July 2009, he became chief of staff and first deputy commander of that army.
Romanchuk is married with two sons.
Russian Defense Policy 