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To offer a contrary opinion. We have seen what a Russian war of annihilation looks like in Chechnya. They leveled cities. It looked apocalyptic. Russia's most heavy-handed tactics in Ukraine hardly resemble this. I would assume, then, that they want the country and its people largely intact.
This is true, in sort of a cosmic sense, but leaving it at that would mean Ukraine would not be beholden to any standard of conduct, which belies the entire point of having rules of war. Everyone thinks they're unquestionably in the right, or they wouldn't be going so far as to kill each other, so putting unilateral blame on those we deem responsible defeats the purpose. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are distinct concepts for a reason.
People point to the destruction of apartments and such as atrocities. I see it as evidence of heavy-handedness, but it is not as straightforward an atrocity as the narrative holds. Many people are shocked and appalled that Russia would "attack residential areas." But battlefields don't really discriminate, and residential areas are not sacrosanct, they are incidental. Now, Ukraine sits in a disadvantaged but motivated position. Attacks on their own people are not going to be an unacceptable outcome to be avoided at all costs. The worst case scenario still puts Russia in an unambiguously bad light, so they have plenty incentive to fight from such positions and not to evacuate people- as you say, terror-bombing is often counter-productive. Which is because when you start killing innocent people in their backyards, your action galvanizes resistance. It isn't exactly a losing PR move for Ukraine.
This isn't really to say that Ukraine is responsible for Russia killing people. But there is an ugly side to all war, even the underdog fighting for their homeland, which usually entails using underhanded tactics like that, as seen in Palestine and Iraq as well. Russia is put in an impossible situation when fighting in areas full of civilians, even if they were angels. And they're not; they have far fewer reservations against civilian casualties than the US, despite cries of genocide being aimed at the latter for the last couple decades. But Russia, callous as they may be, is still doing things for a pragmatic reason, not because they are evil bloodthirsty orcs or what have you. The calculus is more like, "if there is an apartment that looks like a good fighting position overlooking your approach, why not blow it up?" And thus, an area containing becomes directly targeted. I have no doubt that these are the kinds of decisions that are so often characterized as deliberate attacks on civilians. And you'll find these sorts of judgment calls are not harshly condemned in any rules of war Russia has ever agreed to, because no soldiers have a responsibility to preserve what they deem to be credible potential threat to their lives.
I'm open to messages to the contrary, since I really do not sympathize much with Russia despite what I've said, but in my experience, any serious analysis of this issue tends to get drowned out by nationalistic rhetoric.
This point is flatly wrong. Bakhmut absolutely ended up looking like Grozny when all was said and done. Same with Mariupol. I'm sure it's happened in several other smaller towns as well.
Bakhmut is similar to Grozny, Mariupol, Fallujah, Raqqa and Mosul for the simple reason that there is no way to storm a city that is actively defended without total destruction of the infrastructure of this city.Trying to draw any conclusions about the motives of the storming on the basis of the destruction in the stormed city is just a pointless waste of time.
They aren’t leveling cities, and if they are, you deserved it?
I’m not saying it wasn’t strategically justified, because it really is hard to do that. But it is definitely a counter example against people claiming the combatants don’t really mean it.
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