'90% of houses are damaged': Russia's Syria-honed tactics lay Ukraine towns to waste

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ninety-per-cent-of-houses-are-damaged-thousands-trapped-in-ukraines-small-towns

Happiness lies in ruins. This small town – Schastia in Ukrainian – has been out of the headlines since Moscow took its brutal war against civilians to the country’s biggest cities.

But it is here, and in nearby Volnovakha, that the illegal tactics of terrorising civilians for military aims, honed in Syria and then brought back so close to home, have reached a grim high point.

There have been terrible strikes on homes, schools and hospitals around Ukraine. But residents of both towns say the barrage of shelling, rocket assaults and airstrikes since the start of the war has damaged or destroyed nearly every building in their towns, a comprehensive devastation as yet unmatched elsewhere.

The Russian flag has now been raised over the ruins of Schastia. In Volnovakha, the attack is still so intense that dead bodies lie uncollected, says local MP Dmytro Lubinets. Ukrainians still brave enough to run rescue missions are going back only for the living.

Thousands of them are trapped in basements, with dwindling supplies of food and water, sheltering from an apparently senseless attack on a town Lubinets says has no military defenders in its centre. The line of contact is 20km away, he says.

*snip*

[Wingus Dingus]

1. Russia is a terrorist state.

Putin has steered his country straight into the ground.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Next step will be to starve them out.

After you shell a city to smithereens and kill a lot of people, you starve the remaining.

[Crunchy Frog]

3. We're going to sit and watch a genocide unfold, and ultimately do nothing.

Fuck.

[smirkymonkey]

4. I am feeling literally sick to my stomach.

I can't believe what is happening and that there appears to be nothing the rest of the world can do to stop it. My heart breaks for these people.

[Calculating]

6. But he threatened nukes...

Obviously we should all do nothing meaningful as he kills millions of people. Cowardice will be the ruin of our world.

[bhikkhu]

5. I get the Syria parallel, but I think a better one is Chechnya

That was less followed in the news well as it wasn't necessary to call them anything other than "Jihadis" at the time and the west generally lost interest. But the tactics were the same - the steady leveling of cities by overwhelming bomb and missile attacks, then declaring victory on the wasteland that remains. Many of the Chechen casualties died in their basements, of starvation or trapped in rubble.

Ukraine is a lot bigger, but I don't see any difference in the character of the Russian army yet. As long as it has the weapons and cash, I wouldn't expect any kind of basic human decency to stop them. It hasn't before.

[uponit7771]

7. Putrid can't beat UKRs military so they're going after civilians, what a punk assed move.