Putin’s plan “for a quick decapitation of Ukraine’s government and swift capitulation of its major cities” has gone off the rails. Now, his forces must contemplate urban combat, for which they’re “not prepared,” a military expert says (read story here).
“This leaves the Russians two options,” he says, “a prolonged siege to starve the Ukrainians out” or blasting their cities “into rubble.”
Urban warfare involves fighting in rubble-strewn terrain to take individual buildings and blocks (photo below). The more nimble U.S. military, after its experiences in Somalia and Iraq, developed squad-level gear and tactics for that kind of fighting, whereas Russia’s military is programmed to use sledgehammers to drive nails.
Russia also has to fight with poorly trained troops. Only 30% of its army are professional soldiers. The rest are conscripts with minimal training. News reports emphasize Russian shelling of apartment blocks and hospitals, but I wonder how much of that is deliberate, and how much is lousy shooting by undertrained and incompetent troops?
Defeat isn’t an option for Putin, and he has to fight with the army he has. He’s not above sending large numbers of Russian youths to their deaths, but faced with the limitations of what they can accomplish, what’s left is resorting to bigger sledgehammers (see story here).
There’s growing concern he’ll use banned chemical weapons, as in Syria (see story here). And what if he decided to nuke Kyiv and other Ukraine cities? What could, and would, the West do about that? Not much, I suspect.
