How Russia managed in Grozny and Aleppo does not bode well for Ukraine

Syrian doctor Mohammed Abrash (60) is less shocked by the Russian actions in Ukraine than many Europeans. “Russia is now doing exactly the same as in Syria,” he says over the phone from the town of ad-Dana in Idlib province. “Bomb hospitals, kill civilians. It’s a tactic.”

Abrash has been working in Idlib since 2015. For years he operated under the bombs. Colleagues died before his eyes, children in his arms. During the last major offensive on Idlib alone, in the winter of 2019-20, the Assad regime and ally Russia bombed more than 45 hospitals and clinics, according to Abrash. “They have the GPS locations. They aim deliberately.”

Why is Russia committing these war crimes? Abrash laughs cynically. “It’s very simple, really very simple. If you bomb hospitals, the wounded can no longer be cared for. Soldiers can no longer fight, civilians are afraid. Everyone is on the run. Then you can take an area much easier.”

Mariupol surrounded

The Ukrainian army has been holding out in the southern port city of Mariupol for more than two weeks now, but the price is horribly high. According to (unverifiable) figures from the city council, 1,600 civilians have already died. Dozens of dead are buried in a hastily laid out between shelling mass grave† On Saturday, Russian troops shelled a mosque where civilians, including children, were hiding. A reporter from the AP news agency saw how tanks shelled an apartment building and how snipers fired on a group of employees of a hospital.

It seems that the destroyed maternity hospital was also deliberately hit. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, at least, did not deny this when he later stated that the building served as a base for “radical” Ukrainian fighters and was no longer in use as a hospital. He dismissed complaints about civilian casualties as “pity screams” from Russia’s enemies. He gave no explanation for the pregnant women who were pulled from under the rubble.

Mariupol is completely surrounded by Russian troops. Civilians can’t get out, food and medical supplies can’t get in. It looks like President Putin is trying to force the defenders of the strategically important city to surrender by hitting civilians. The same is happening with Kharkov and Mykolaiv. The question is whether this will also be the case with Kiev, where Russian soldiers have penetrated the suburbs this weekend.

Syria as a testing ground

Recent history shows how far Putin is willing to go. In Syria, he destroyed cities like Aleppo and bombed so many hospitals that one separate Wikipedia page devoted to the subject. In the five-day invasion of Georgia in 2008, the Russian army also bombed civilian targets. And even earlier, in 2000, when Putin had just come to power, he recaptured the Chechen capital Grozny from rebels and installed militia chief Akhmad Kadyrov there. Chechen fighters are now helping the Russians in Ukraine.

“There is a straight line from Grozny via Georgia and Syria to Ukraine, says former US diplomat Wa’el Alzayat. He was a policy adviser to President Obama’s representative to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and at the time called for stronger action against Russia’s actions in Syria. “Putin tested many of the tactics in Syria that we see today, from bombing civilians to spreading disinformation. Our failure to intervene at the time has ensured that Putin continues on the same path.”

Wall of city buses

Urban warfare is schematically more difficult for the attacker than for the defender. According to one estimate, five attackers are needed per defender, according to the other ten. The defenders know the city, hide in buildings, can erect all kinds of barricades (think of the wall of city buses in Aleppo) and booby traps lay. Taking such a city quickly boils down to door-to-door fighting. The Russian army is not good at that.

This was evident, for example, in Grozny, in December 1999. Russian soldiers had surrounded the city and wanted to take it with a ground offensive. However, the column in which they rode in became awaited by thousands of Chechen fighters with rifles and rocket launchers. After three hours, Minutka Square was littered with Russian corpses and burnt-out armored vehicles, reported Reuters news agency.

The Russian response was rocket fire and bombing for weeks, until Grozny was reduced to ashes and at least 5,000 civilians had died. Russia had felt free to use violence on this scale. After all, it had given citizens the opportunity to leave the city via a humanitarian corridor, but not all residents dared to flee. Whoever stayed behind had declared themselves an enemy, was the Russian reasoning, and was “a Muslim terrorist.”

Don’t feel fear. If you die that’s okay, that’s your fate. But keep fighting and you will win, for you are within your rights.

Abuse of humanitarian corridors also played out around Syrian Aleppo in 2016. Citizens using these routes used came out into territory that was in the hands of Assad. Continued fighting made it impossible to flee. And in addition, they turned out to be mainly intended to be able to carry out a heavy attack on the city afterwards, not to help people in need. It is estimated that more than 1,600 civilians were killed in the bombings that followed.

The same has been happening for over a week now with the corridors that Russia says it offers in Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities. There are always new, unfulfilled promises of a ceasefire. Aid convoys come under fire and have to turn around. And there is the fear among residents that staying in the city means that you will soon be counted among the enemy.

“When the Russians meet with resistance, they use barbaric tactics,” said Alzayat. “Then they bomb cities to kill and drive people out. They can be quite content to wipe out an entire country if they can’t win in a more peaceful way. Call it the Grozny rule: there is a continuous line in strategy and in us [westers] inability to stop Putin.”

‘Volunteers’ and Bioweapons

Two developments in recent days point to possible further Russian escalation. Putin has invited fighters from Syria and other countries in the Middle East to join his army as ‘volunteers’ in Ukraine. An added benefit of these mercenaries to Putin is that he can keep them out of official death statistics, which could be important for domestic support for his war. According to Defense Minister Shoigu had already “more than 16,000 reported.” How realistic this is is unclear, but it wouldn’t be the first time: Russia also deployed pro-regime Syrian fighters in Libya.

And then there’s the ghost game surrounding biological weapons. On Friday, Russia called the UN Security Council because the United States is allegedly involved in the production of biological weapons in Ukraine. It provided no evidence. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that Russia is “inventing” the charges to justify attacks against civilians. According to the US, there is reason to fear that Russia itself uses chemical or biological weapons, which is prohibited under international law. The US also provided no evidence.

Putin is well acquainted with such weapons: he is accused of poisoning opposition leader Navalny (with nerve agent novichok), former KGB agent Litvinenko (polonium) and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (dioxin). In Syria, the use of chemical weapons against civilians has been blamed on the Assad regime, but Russia did everything it could to thwart investigations into its ally’s war crimes.

Meanwhile, the Russian advance towards Kiev continues. On Saturday, Ukraine said seven women and children were killed in a Russian attack as they fled fighting in a suburb of the capital.

“If Putin is not stopped militarily, he will not stop,” Alzayat predicts. He calls for an increase in military support for Ukraine. Among other things, Turkey’s intervention against the Assad regime and the Russians in 2020, which ended their offensive on Idlib, shows that it is indeed possible to deter Putin militarily. “But of course the considerations are different this time.”

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Mohammed Abrash certainly has no expectations of NATO. “In Syria, Putin massacred us for years and the world did nothing.”

It also disturbs the doctor that Europe shows more compassion for Ukrainians than for Syrians. “We are Muslims and we don’t have blue eyes,” he says scornfully. According to him, the people in Idlib see the differences less. Local artists recently painted a Ukrainian flag on the ruins of a Syrian house that the Russians flattened. “We are going through the same scenario. We feel what they feel.”

Abrash does have some advice for the Ukrainians. “We can teach them how to build underground hospitals,” he says. “But the most important thing is: don’t give up, be firm, don’t feel fear. If you die that’s okay, that’s your fate. But keep fighting and you will win, because you are right.”