Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted on Thursday that his invasion of Ukraine “will be planned”, and experts warn that the failure of Russian forces to achieve a quick victory in the first eight days of the war could mean that the worst is yet to come for civilians. .
“Russia has a significant air and missile advantage over Ukraine,” Scott Boston, a senior defense analyst at RAND, told Yahoo News. “If the Russian leadership, if Vladimir Putin continues to double this and insists that Kyiv must be conquered, there is still a lot of violence that Russia can resort to.
Attempts to predict exactly how the war will unfold or whether Putin may be forced to agree to a ceasefire are difficult. If history is a guide, however, the Russians may simply try to force Ukraine to submit, no matter how long it takes.
Destroyed Russian armored vehicles in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, west of Kyiv, on Friday. (Aris Messinis / AFP via Getty Images)
During an almost 11-week campaign, from December 1994 to February 1995, Russian forces laid siege to the Chechen city of Grozny. When this was done, estimates put the death toll at between 25,000 and 30,000.
Beginning in 2012, Russian forces assisted the Syrian government in a relentless four-year attack on the Syrian city of Aleppo that killed about 31,000 civilians.
What is happening now in Ukrainian cities, experts say, bears a striking resemblance to the two conflicts. Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, said the images from the bombing of Kharkov were “like Aleppo again.”
Sergei Orlov, Mariupol’s deputy mayor, said on Wednesday that his city was witnessing a “human catastrophe”, with entire areas around it being compared to Russian bombs and artillery fire. Medics were not allowed to retrieve the dead as the Kremlin tried to bomb cities to comply, he said.
Philip Reeker, Chargé d’Affaires of the United States in the United Kingdom, warned that “medieval tactics are certainly what we can expect. [from Putin]. That’s exactly what President Putin and the Russian military mean. “
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In terms of military power, Russia has a clear advantage over Ukraine in the conflict. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, only its tanks outnumber those of Ukrainian forces by 3 to 1. In terms of military aircraft, Ukraine has 200 attack aircraft, including helicopters and 27 warships, while Russia has the most – a little 1300 planes and 34 warships.
Residential building destroyed by shelling in the village of Borodyanka in the Kiev region of Ukraine on Thursday. (Maxim Levin / Reuters)
Yet nine days after the war, the level of resistance raised by Ukraine surprised many experts.
“We expected to see certain things, but we didn’t,” Boston said. “You have seen Ukrainian civilians come out, blocking the movement of Russian armored vehicles. We see them going straight for the Russians in some cases. “
Boston said Putin may simply have misjudged how to carry out his attack on Ukraine.
“We’ve seen an initial set of cruise and ballistic missile strikes,” Boston said. “But this was not followed by a large-scale air strike campaign, as might be expected. Parts of this operation are very similar to the way they tried to carry out the operation in Crimea.
Unlike in 2014, when Putin quickly took over the Crimean peninsula, Ukrainians are now retaliating by keeping Kremlin-led forces away from most major cities. “One major difference is that this time the Ukrainians are retaliating,” Boston said. “So he seems to have caught the one who created the plan unprepared.
Although the people of the West applauded the Ukrainian resistance, there will probably be no shortage of tragic moments in the coming days and weeks.
“It’s important to keep in mind that while what has happened so far is horrible and a crime, it could get a lot worse,” Boston said. “And, frankly, I’m not entirely sure how it won’t get much worse.”