The Soviet Union, for its part, was scheduled to launch the final annihilation of the German 6th Army in mid-December. However, due to the aforementioned Manstein's "Winter Storm" operation, Stalin was forced to order Vasilevsky to suspend the execution at 10:30 p.m. on December 14.
After repelling Manstein, the Soviets redrew their encirclement plan at the end of December. Originally, the task of encircling Paulus was jointly undertaken by the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front. Having two high command commands commanding the annihilation war was obviously a troublesome affair. In particular, Rokossovsky, Yelyommenko, and Vasilevsky, who was sent to coordinate, were not fuel-saving lamps, and the open struggle was endless. So on 19 December, Stalin sent Voronov to coordinate the unified operations of the two fronts. Soon Stalin felt that this was not enough.
On 30 December, Stalin abruptly ordered Yelyommenko, commander of the Stalingrad Front, to hand over all the 62nd, 64th, and 57th Armies of the Encirclement to the Don Front. This meant that the entire Red Army encircling Paulus would be under the unified command of Rokossovsky, commander of the Don Front, and Yelemenko would be stripped of the honor of eliminating Paulus.
Stalin also told Zhukov a lot of bad things about Yelyommenko: good bragging, no prestige. Rokossovsky was the man who deservedly eliminated Paulus. Stalin was somewhat eccentric about Rokossovsky's praise. In fact, Rokossovsky did not perform well in the Stalingrad battlefield, especially the task of dividing the northern flank of Paulus and burying a tank army in vain.