This is a Russian war tactic, used in Syria, see below.
Russian forces bombard civilian areas in the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, an official says.
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — After several quiet days, Russian forces opened fire on civilian areas of Mykolaiv on Friday evening, hitting a cafe, a home and the parking lot of a large shopping center, the regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said in a message on Telegram.
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For nearly two weeks, Russian forces have been trying to seize Mykolaiv, a strategic port city of about half a million people, but have met fierce resistance by Ukrainian troops, who have repelled repeated attacks. The failure to take Mykolaiv has slowed the Russian advance along Ukraine’s Black Sea coast in the direction of Odessa, which, as Ukraine’s largest port city, appears to be a key Russian objective.
Later in the evening, a smiling Mr. Kim, whose jovial video messages in even the darkest moments have gained him a huge following in Ukraine, announced that city utilities were working to restore power to several neighborhoods where it had been knocked out by the shelling.
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Russian sieges of Ukrainian cities provoke bitter recollections for Syrians.
What does military doctrine say about how to break a siege--a breakout, an unexpected counteroffensive? I don't know but I'm going to look it up.
Huda Khayti endured years of deprivation under siege by Syrian government forces in a rebel-held Damascus suburb. ...
When she saw the reports of similar sieges playing out in Ukraine, this time at the hands of Syria’s closest ally, Russia, she said it stirred up bitter recollections for Syrian survivors of their own government’s attempts to starve them into submission. Many of them spent years in blockaded towns with dwindling supplies of food, fuel and medicine, where people eventually resorted to eating grass, leaves and even cats.
“With every image I see, I am going back and living the moments that I lived in Ghouta,” she added, her voice beginning to tremble. “It’s very similar.”
Pause: The Ghouta chemical attack occurred in Ghouta, Syria, during the Syrian civil war, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. Two opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people[3] to 1,729.[14] That is what the Russians are laying the groundwork for in Ukraine's cities, even going so far as to import Syrian regulars. They raise a false flag, "The Ukrainians and Americans are manufacturing bio- and chem-weapons in Ukraine!", and then do it themselves. Unpause.
Ghouta, a Damascus suburb besieged from 2013-2018, was just one of a long list of rebel-held towns and cities that the Syrian government forces and their allies surrounded and cut off from the rest of the country to crush an armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule that morphed into an 11-year-old civil war. Such sieges enabled the Assad government to claw back control over much of the country.
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“I’m extremely pained when I see what they are living through and that it’s the same enemy that was shelling me and my family,” Mr. Aziz said of the Ukrainians under Russian assault
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Russia’s military played an integral part in the Syrian war and supported Mr. al-Assad in many ways, including airstrikes that targeted and killed civilians. The Russian Air Force repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria in order to crush the last pockets of resistance to the government, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
The war in Ukraine, in many respects, is following an eerily similar playbook to the war in Syria, with sieges of cities like Mariupol and the targeting of hospitals and schools — all tactics meant to cower the population into surrendering quickly. Many Syrians blame Russia for introducing the military tactic of sieges to Syria after using it notoriously against the city of Grozny to crush separatism in the Russian region of Chechnya.
So that is three times this century. There has to be a tactic to counter it.
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“We didn’t understand what a siege was when it began,” [another Syrian survivor] said. “We didn’t think it would last that long and people would be starved in such a systematic way.”
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[He] had hoped that their experiences could at least serve as a lesson for the international community.
“The same scenes are being repeated,” he said. “If you weren’t going to intervene in Syria, at least learn from it and protect other people.”
Yes.
