Kyiv could face the same fate as Aleppo or Grozny as Russia attacks
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One woman looks at her damaged apartment block as she reacts to the shelling of Kyiv’s March 14th 2022.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been fully under way. Signs are that it is beginning with shelling residential neighborhoods in the northwest of Kyiv and then a large convoy of Russian military hardware moving to positions on the outskirts.
While Ukrainian forces and fighters have mounted a staunch resistance in other parts of the country — and Kyiv has been heavily fortified in anticipation of a largescale Russian attack — analsyts fear the city could face the same scale of destruction the Chechen capital Grozny, and Aleppo in Syria, experienced in recent conflicts.
Since Russia invaded Kyiv in February 24th, there have been intermittent shellings. But attacks seem to have intensified in the last few daysMultiple people have been killed by air strikes against residential buildings.
The strikes were in response to reports that an closely watched column of military vehicles had regrouped and been dispersed to different locations north of the capital.
It’s hard to know if it is. [shelling] is just another sporadic episode or if it heralds the beginning of a full-on attack on the city in the manner of Grozny and the two Chechen campaigns or another parallel which is often drawn is Aleppo,” Christopher Granville, managing director at TS Lombard, told CNBC Tuesday.
“Like all the other people in the world. It’s something I hope won’t see, but it could,” he stated.
Russia claims it doesn’t target civilians, despite the overwhelming evidence that the contrary was the case during the invasion of Ukraine. Many observers labeled the bombings of Mariupol’s children’s hospital and Mariupol’s maternity ward as war crimes.
Russia denies that the attackers targeted civilians. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed without evidence that the hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian Ultra Radicals. Sergei Lavrov (foreign minister) said it was “not first time” that he had seen people shouting at each other in response so-called atrocities.
From Grozny, Aleppo
It is alarming to think of the potential battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Kyiv as a similarity to the events in Aleppo or Grozny. This warning signals the dangers that the city and its citizens could face.
The 2016 Battle of Aleppo, in which Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces — aided and abetted by Russia — took back rebel-held areas of the city after a month-long aerial bombing campaign, killing hundreds of civilians including children as a result and leaving the city largely in ruins. Russia’s backing and the battle were considered a turning point during civil war. It also helped cement Assad’s regime.
An elderly woman in Syria is seen walking amid the chaos in Aleppo’s Old City’s Bab al Qinnasrin, February 10, 2019.
Louai Beshara | Afp | Getty Images
However, Ukraine is more familiar with what happened in Chechnya during the 1990s. Grozny was the country’s capital and declared by the U.N. the “most devastated city on Earth”, after being invaded, bombarded, bombed, and decimated twice by Russian forces.
The First Chechen War, which Russia started in 1994 to subjugate a Chechen independence movement, ended in 1996. A fragile and uneasy peace prevailed, until Russia invaded. Chechnya again in 1999 following a Chechen invasion of neighboring DagestanAnd a series of apartment block bombings in Russia. These were attributable to Chechen rebels were also seen as a “false flag” operationThe Russian security service orchestrated this to allow Chechnya to be invaded again.
An early indication of Putin’s aggressive and unrepentant style of leadership came when he vowed that the military would not stop bombing Grozny until Russian troops “fulfilled their task to the end.”
Russian aggression was so brutal that it took only a few months for an end to be achieved. Russian forces seized control of Chechnya in February 2000 after three months of winter siege.
An elderly Chechen woman is heard crying as she walks along Grozny’s Main Street 28 December 1994. This was the capital of the separatist southern republic of Chechnya. It was destroyed by heavy Russian bombardments. Russian troops entered Chechnya on 11 December 1994 in order to introduce constitutional rule within the Caucasus republic.
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Urban warfare
This war will determine the fate and eventual fall of Kyiv. It is an ominous prospect for the government of Ukraine under President Volodymyr Zilenskyy and city officials such as Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Many of these residents are now among 3 million Ukrainians who have fled their country.
Many Ukrainians chose to fight and stay, while Kyiv was transformed into a “fortress”, as Klitschko stated.
“I don’t like to use that term, but I believe the ‘Groznyfication’ has started in Kyiv. CNBC was told Tuesday by Max Hess of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Hess pointed out that Kyiv could see similar scenes to Aleppo, Grozny and Grozny if Russia invades the city. Hess believed Putin believes he needs to win because “a loss would have catastrophic consequences for his regime in Russia.”
He said that any battle for Kyiv would be lengthy and difficult, fought street by street. Russia could inflict utter destruction.
Grozny wasn’t pacified after they had effectively destroyed the city. Chechen fighters were, literally, fighting war from collapsed roofs and in sewers,” Hess explained, adding that similar battles for Kyiv must be waged “from the streets, but the Ukrainian people appear to be quite willing to do this.”
Close observers of Putin are concerned that he may resort to extreme measures in order to end Ukraine’s resistance as the war drags along. This is widely believed to be a fear he has underestimated.
It is clear already that Putin won’t be able achieve his political goals of forcing Ukrainians to surrender their sovereignty in order to accept a new era under Russian dominance. He now only has two options,” Doug Klain (assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center), said. said in a blogpost Tuesday.
He said that Russia’s ruler could either increase the conflict with a more violent campaign to eliminate any Ukrainian opposition or accept his predicament, and try to stop the carnage.
Russian forces have been occupying Mariupol for nearly two weeks, and the siege continues. This shows how willing they are to destroy Ukrainian cities. Mariupol’s conditions are dire, with the city experiencing shortages of food, water, medicine, heat, and electricity.
Maxar satellite image (c) 2022 Maxar Technologies. Satellite image (c), 2022 Maxar Technologies
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Mariupol may have seen as many as 22,000 civilians die. a Ukrainian official has saidAlthough the numbers are difficult to verify, the EU believes the official total is over 2,400. Many thousand civilians were free to flee on Monday and Tuesday. However, Russia accused them of blocking an aid convoy.
Negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and other parties aimed to reach a deal on Monday and Tuesday continued. But the Kremlin is still spewing aggressive rhetoric.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, stated Monday that Russian forces would be able to take complete control of the major cities of Ukraine. He also dismissed concerns about the impacts on civilians, saying the U.S. has shown disregard for human lives with its bombing of Yugoslavia and its wars against the Middle East, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan. Russian state news agency TASS reported.
CNBC reached out to the Kremlin as well as the Russian Foreign Ministry in order to get a reply on concerns about Kyiv’s future.
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