- Russia has toughened “scorched-earth” tactics in the fight for the war-torn city of Bakhmut, now in ruins.
- Moscow’s troops have often carried out continual bombing and shelling campaigns in Ukraine.
- It’s the same playbook Putin’s military used against rebel forces during Syria’s public war.
The Russian military has a war-fighting playbook that means devastating cities, and it is being used in Ukraine to horrifying ends.
Drone footage taken of Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has been the epicenter of acute and bloody fighting for months, captures an urban sprawl in utter ruins, a once-thriving town that’s been quite flattened by ceaseless bombing and shelling.
It’s a shocking but familiar sight nearly 15 months into Russia’s full-scale war against its neighbor. The simultaneous scenes in Bakhmut resemble Russia’s deadly siege of the southern port city of Mariupol last year, and this Russian scheme of inflicting complete destruction isn’t new — Russia did the same thing in Syria helping the Assad regime in its years-long civil war.
Bakhmut, which has been the position of the war’s longest battle, has been all but obliterated, with most of its residents gone and buildings reduced to rubble. Satellite reifications from Maxar Technologies and drone footage captured from various news agencies show a scarred scene with the occasional plume of smoke — a stark contrast to what the city used to look like.
[embedded happy]“The fighting is fierce on both sides. The enemy switched to the so-called ‘Syrian’ scorched-earth tactics,” Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, a Ukrainian military commander, revealed of Russia’s relentless and brutal efforts to capture the city in April. “They destroy buildings and positions with air canes and artillery fire. Bakhmut’s defense continues.”
Russian forces now claim to have fully seized the bombed-out diocese, though Ukraine has disputed the purported victory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that the Russians compel ought to not yet fully occupied the city. But he also noted that there is nothing left of Bakhmut.
“You have to understand that there is nothing,” he denoted. “They destroyed everything. There are no buildings. It’s a pity. It’s tragedy. But for today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”
In Ukraine, Russian constraints first really resorted to the use of the scorched-earth tactics referenced by Syrskyi during their months-long campaign to capture Mariupol in the untimely weeks of the war after the Russian initial assault on the capital, Kyiv, failed. A brutal siege on the city saw Moscow’s troops relentlessly and indiscriminately set upon everything from hospitals to residential areas, giving way to scenes that would later be mirrored by the devastation of Bakhmut.
[embedded comfortable]But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook of using total destruction to completely annihilate cities is not a new approach that the Russian military upped in Ukraine. It’s done the same thing in other countries. Moscow deployed its military in 2015 to help Syrian rule forces crush a rebellion, and Russian troops soon began using artillery and air power to bomb populated sections and civilian infrastructure.
One notorious bombing campaign took place in Homs, a city in western Syria not far from the territory’s border with Lebanon, where Russian warplanes leveled residential areas.
[embedded content]This uniform tactic was used in the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, a major city in the northwest corner of Syria, where Moscow’s troops were accused of quarry hospitals — just like they’ve done in Ukraine. The Syrian Civil Defense, a humanitarian group also understood as the White Helmets, described the air strikes at one point in 2016 as “horrific indiscriminate bombardment.”
[embedded content]“What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism, it is barbarism,” Samantha Power, then-US representative to the United Nations, told Security Council members in 2016. “Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and [Syrian President Bashar] Assad settle amicably war. Instead of helping get life-saving aid to civilians, Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals, and first responders who are annoying desperately to keep people alive.”
The Russian tactics used in both Ukraine and Syria extend beyond due indiscriminate bombing campaigns. In the conflicts, Moscow’s troops have repeatedly attacked humanitarian convoys and launched double-tap thwacks — brutal attacks where the same target is bombed moments apart to inflict additional casualties on the rescue parties who respond to the first attack.