As Russian artillery and rockets attack Ukraine’s hospitals and apartment buildings, destroying residential districts that serve no military purpose, the world watches in horror at what for Russia it is an increasingly common practice.
His forces carried out similar attacks in Syria, where they bombed hospitals and other civilian infrastructure as part of their intervention to prop up the Syrian government.
Moscow went even further into Chechnya, a border area that had sought its independence with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. During two wars that served as a formation there, Russian artillery and air forces turned the buildings of the cities and their infantry forces massacred civilians in what everyone saw as a campaign designed to terrorize and subdue the population.
Now it appears that Vladimir Putin, whose rise to the Russian presidency happened at the same time and was in some ways cemented by the Chechen wars, is following a similar script in Ukraine, albeit only gradually so far.
These tactics reflect something more specific than simple cruelty. They grew out of Russia’s experiences in a series of wars that led its leaders to conclude, for both strategic and ideological reasons, that bombing entire populations was not only acceptable, but valid in military terms.
They also reflect the conditions of an authoritarian government with few allies, allowing the Kremlin to ignore the outrage at its military conduct and even adopt it… or, at least, that is what Russian leaders seem to believe.
“Huge destruction and collateral deaths within the civilian population are acceptable to reduce our own casualties,” Alexei Arbatov, a leading Russian military strategist and then federal legislator, wrote in 2000 during Russia’s Second War. in Chechnya.
“The use of force, if it is applied in a decisive and massive way, is the most efficient way to solve problems,” Arbatov wrote, adding that the horror that the world feels in front of it should not be “given so much importance”. to Russia’s actions.
However, the staggering number of human losses considered irrelevant by those who defend this strategy may partly explain why it has so far failed in Ukraine.
World outrage did not stop Russia from going ahead in Chechnya and Syria, but it is now unleashing the sanctions and military backing that are wrecking Russia’s economy and bogging down its invasion, underscoring that perhaps Moscow’s style of warfare Don’t be as relentlessly pragmatic as you think.
Of course, through aerial attacks with drones and other devices, the United States also frequently kills civilians in wars, whose figures it considers a regrettable but acceptable cost. Although the intent behind this strategy differs from Russia’s, the distinction may not matter to the dead.
Russian style of war
The Soviet military emerged from World War II with a mission to never again allow a foreign invasion on its soil and became powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with NATO partner forces.
But in 1979, he faced a threat he was unprepared for: the insurgency in Afghanistan, the neighboring country that Soviet forces invaded that year.
The Soviets suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Afghan rebels before returning home a decade later, weakened and humiliatingly defeated.
During the war, Soviet authorities came to prefer both aerial potential and large-scale displays of violence.
According to a war chronicle written in 1984: “In the valleys around Kabul, the Russians carried out a series of major operations using hundreds of tanks, mobilizing significant assets, using bombs, rockets, napalm and even, on one occasion, gas, with which they destroyed everything in their path.”
Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated and with it much of what had been the Soviet Army. That year, the leaders of Chechnya began to claim independence for that region. In 1994, Moscow carried out an intense attack with the aim of regaining control.
Once again, Russian troops suffered heavy casualties against the insurgents. A month-long siege of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, resulted in the destruction of much of the city and the deaths of thousands of civilians. But in 1996, Russian soldiers withdrew in defeat, further diminishing the Kremlin’s weakening grip on power.
These costly defeats caused them to avoid deploying infantrymen—whose numbers had also been reduced by the breakup of the Soviet Union—in direct combat. Moscow fixed it by using its predominant tools of war—the tanks and artillery it had amassed to match NATO—against the civilian population it now saw as its enemy in counterinsurgency campaigns.
So when Moscow invaded Chechnya for the second time in 1999, its commanding general said that Russia’s mistake was that it had “been too kind,” and vowed to escalate the violence.
Human rights groups documented a series of massacres during the war. In some cases, the Russian authorities marked some villages as “safe zones” and then wrapped them in so-called fuel and air bombs (prohibited by the Geneva Conventions), with which they killed many people at once.
“All those who remain in Grozny will be considered terrorists and will be eliminated by artillery and air force,” warned an official military edict. Although the statement was withdrawn, Russian forces indiscriminately shelled the city and blocked its exits to prevent residents from fleeing.
That conflict, along with the Russian military’s modifications for a new Europe where NATO forces now far outnumbered its own, gave rise to a different kind of doctrine.
“Troop attacks, which previously predetermined the outcome of battles, will now, and even more so in the future, only be used to complete the defeat of the enemy,” Russian official AA Korabelnikov wrote in a 2019 technical report.
Rather, it was the artillery and air force that did most of the work, dealing devastating damage from a distance. But because much of this technology was still Soviet-era, the attacks were almost always indiscriminate, which Moscow had employed in Chechnya anyway.
When Russian forces stormed into Syria in 2015, Moscow’s allied army there was already massacring civilians on a massive scale. Trying to avoid a quagmire like the one in Afghanistan, the Russian air force razed Syrian cities from above, thereby consolidating the model applied in Chechnya.
Valeri Gerasimov, now a senior Russian general, wrote in 2016 that the country’s forces were “gaining invaluable combat experience in Syria” and learned lessons that Moscow extrapolated into formal policy making the following year.
Russian forces did not immediately apply the same method in Ukraine. But as the invasion has run out of steam, they have increasingly focused on civilian areas, especially cities that they have had trouble capturing, such as Mariupol and Kharkov.
A chilling style of war
For all the ruthlessness of Moscow, perhaps much of the ravages of Russia’s wars come down to a simple question of the location of the fighting: often in large cities controlled by the opposition.
Throughout the modern era, urban sieges have consistently been a part of the bloodiest forms of warfare.
They are almost always characterized by horrific violence against civilians as invaders seek to wipe out strongholds of resistance in areas where perhaps millions of innocent people still live. Homelessness and starvation of the population are common.
When armed resistance continues with determination, the invaders almost always see the entire population as a threat that must be eradicated. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
