Putin's military terror tactics in Ukraine fail - military expert

According to Professor Michael Clark, the experience of bombing of civilian objects from Dresden to Vietnam shows that such a strategy rarely leads to success. Historical experience shows that the tactics of Russia's military terror in Ukraine fail. About it in his column The Sunday Times writes Professor of Military Research of the Royal College of London Michael Clark. "I always believed that if President Putin does not win this war in the first 72 hours, as he wanted, he eventually loses her.

But he does not lose gracefully," says the military expert. Over the last few weeks, the Russian military machine has been reoriented on the task of massive strikes in civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. According to Clark, it looks like a "stubborn symbol of powerlessness" by Putin, given that Moscow has not been able to achieve any of its stated military goals.

As a result, Russian troops are buried trying to protect their positions, and the Ukrainian population faces "vengeful" missile attacks and blows Dron-Kamikadze. And if the high-precision missiles in the aggressor country are over, cheap Iranian drones of $ 20,000 are allowed to launch them with "swarms" and "waves". Professor Clark believes that in other conflicts, Russia considered the opponent's military forces and civilian population as an equal purpose.

Similar tactics could be observed since the Second World War, when Soviet soldiers moved to Berlin, and later in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria, Libya and Little. At the same time, the expert emphasizes that historical experience demonstrates that strokes show low strategic efficiency.

"It was believed that the attacks of large clusters of bombers, and then drones, rockets, and now reactive artillery can devastate the country and, undoubtedly, break the will of the population to continue the war, or bring people to despair in case of destruction , - Clark writes. However, this is not the case, the professor assures. As an example, he cites Tokyo's American bombardment who could not break the will of the Japanese.

Later, the US had the largest air bombing in military history, dropping 4. 6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam. As a result, about 2 million civilians were killed. Despite the fact that the futile tactic was obvious then, NATO used it in 1999, destroying energy infrastructure in Belgrade. But, as it turned out, it was of particular importance for Serbs.

"The fundamental reality is such that there was no need for bombardment to break the will to resist any population, already tuned,"-said Professor Clark. According to a military expert, in fact the meaning of destruction of energy infrastructure and strikes in the peaceful population in Ukraine is not for the Kremlin's military purposes. The reason for this is the mood within Russia. "Hawks" - a party of war in Russia - requires that the Kremlin "removed gloves" and acted harder in Ukraine.

Military -minded society demands casualties among civilians, not just in the Armed Forces. And Putin in this way decided to reassure them. We will remind, the official spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, using the embarrassed stamps of the Kremlin propaganda, commented on the results of the summit of EU leaders, which condemned terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities.