Russian Brutality Brought to Urban Warfare

"I think it's going to become the defining feature of this conflict." 

"It seems that [cities] are where a lot of the decisions will be made about the future of Ukraine, the future of Ukraine-Russia relations, the future of Russia-European relations."

"That is where the war is going to be won or lost or stopped."

"In many ways, Russia has been holding back in inflicting damage on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It's already really horrific and it's only just begun."

Rita Konaev, Russia and urban warfare expert, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Georgetown University

 

"If both sides] go at it [in urban areas in the coming days and weeks], it will b very bloody."

"The Russian army is built around its artillery. Artillery was the Soviet god of war and that hasn't changed."

Michael Boire, retired NATO  war planner professor of history, Royal Military College

"Cities have now become very strategic because they are political, social, economic, cultural centres of influence."

"More and more political and military leaders are understanding that if you capture cities, you can maybe control an entire country."

"In the urban terrain, the enemy is up above, in front, below and behind you. You bump into them in hallways, it's hand-to-hand combat, which takes a huge psychological toll on soldiers."

"Their [Russian] doctrine relies heavily on artillery and missiles and bombs and that has been known for decades. I do fear that once again they will use a massive amount of firepower to destroy Kyiv and other cities."

Maj.Jayson Geroux, instructor, Canadian Forces Combat Training Centre

A Ukrainian soldier carries a child while assisting people crossing a destroyed bridge near Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, during heavy shelling on March 5, 2022.

Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

 

Apartment buildings wrecked, schools damaged and hospitals struck by shelling and aerial bombardment that has also killed hundreds of civilians. In this era of social media and the ease with which videos and incriminating photographs can be taken and downloaded so that the entire world community can see what is occurring, the Russian onslaught to render Ukraine once again a vassal state has shocked viewers in the violent intensity of the war that Russia's president speaks of variously as a "peacekeeping mission" and a "special military operation".

Experts in modern warfare techniques now anticipate a form of warfare to unfold as Moscow pushes relentlessly toward its goal to break the iconic Ukrainian spirit of defence against daunting odds. The spectre of what is yet to come in  the form of brutal urban warfare is foreseen as playing a huge role in this war, resulting in a more devastating impact on ordinary Ukrainians. It will also have its downside for Russian troops in potential losses.

It was evident from day one of the invasion that the expectation of Vladimir Putin was that it would be quick and easy work to bomb and shell Ukrainian cities like Kyiv into submission. Their test runs in Chechnya and Syria imbued Moscow with confidence that Ukraine was ripe to fall, just as Georgia and Chechnya had. Relentless bombing, destroyed infrastructure, and countless dead to batter opposition into stunned resignation.

Aerial bombardment aligned with a second-choice assigning of ground forces to flood Kyiv and other urban centres where block-by-block intense combat would be fiercely tough as an ancillary and vital route to securing the goal of capturing the cities, yet it could also produce advantages not necessarily to the invaders, but to the invaded, according to urban-operations specialists. But not without the steep cost of bloodshed on a larger scale for both sides.

In the second week of the assault against a sovereign nation, the focus of the Russian military has been on Ukraine's cities. A military which has also been given orders to capture and hold the country's nuclear plants. One large city has now fallen to Russia; Kherson in the south, while Mariupol has been surrounded and is being massively bombarded, and the second largest city in Ukraine -- Kharkiv -- is experiencing fierce artillery barrages and bombing.

The threatening, huge convoy parked not far from Kyiv and stalled due to lack of supplies, or being bogged down in difficult terrain, or resulting from rolling stock that hadn't been adequately and routinely maintained and, experts suggest, equipped with inferior tires, awaits entry into the capital city. Putin's strategy appears transparently clear; possess the cities and the war is won. As Major Geroux notes, warfare has become urban in nature in this century.

In developing countries the migration of nations' countryside populations to their cities sees national majorities living in cities, a number currently at 55 percent, but set to climb to a high of 85 percent in the next generation. Leading to Putin's "maximalist" goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government to reinstall another puppet government whose first and foremost loyalty would be to Russia.

Cities, notes Major Geroux, are vertical battle spaces. Internal fighters are able to snipe at invaders from within buildings, on rooftops, behind visual obstacles enabling them to move from place to place in subway tunnels, sewers and passageways underground to track and evade the invaders. Four times the normal energy expanded in conventional battlefield conflict is required with urban conflict; it becomes exhausting and casualties are three to six times greater in city streets than from fighting in open landscapes.

 

Whatever is old is new again. There is nothing that does not repeat itself, interminably. In the era of Imperial Rome, its armies settled down restive populations taking to rebellion by targeting their cities. When Judaic rebels decided they would no longer tolerate being subjects of Rome, that they would once again be sovereign and self-reliant, Rome moved its military machine to lay siege to various Jewish cities, among them Jerusalem, and the prolonged battles that played out in urban settings were vicious, taking their toll in human life on both sides, the aggressor and the defender.

Servicemen require far more water and food rations reflecting the physical demands of fighting in and around buildings and above and below ground. In these situations food scarcity challenges both the aggressors and the defenders. The city becomes an environment that has the potential to be of benefit to defenders, however. In Ukraine volunteers have trained civilians in basic military skills capable of fighting, albeit as amateurs, alongside trained soldiers. What they lack in military skills they compensate for in their will to resist.

Russia is making use not only of cluster bombs aimed at civilian populations, but thermobaric "vacuum" bombs as well. Thee are bombs that release a cloud of volatile gas to "creep" into buildings and below ground. Milliseconds later,they detonate with shattering force, claiming countless lives. They are, needless to say, proscribed weapons within the international rules-based community. There is also the matter of logistics in that Kyiv is huge and it would require a massive injection of ground troops to capture it, block by block.

In the process, huge casualties would result, and the issues of resupply and soldier fatigue come into play. All of which practical details lead some experts in warfare to believe that the Russian military will choose to avoid becoming mired down in urban operations. Persuading tactical planners within the Russian military to continue to rely on massive bombing, to stay with the success that won them  the Chechnya wars in the mid-1990s and early 2000s when Moscow laid siege to Grozny, completely destroying it along with tens of thousands of its inhabitants

It was the very strategy used in Syria in defence of Syria's Bashar al-Assad's war against his Sunni-Syrian citizens opposed to his rule, where Russian forces carried out air and artillery assaults on areas of the country held by rebels. In the process it also deliberately targeted hospitals and other spirit-breaking, civilian-slaughtering targets. Russia was accused of war crimes in a 2020 UN Human Rights Council report.

Ukrainian emergency service personnel and servicemen stand around a body of a victim following shelling of the City Hall building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022.  AP