By MARCIO JOSE MENDONCA*
The tactics of destruction of Ukrainian cities and towns, even on a massive scale, do not aim at the total and definitive destruction of Ukrainian urban space.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 once again demonstrates the importance of cities in the context of urban combat. Although cities have been targets of military action since ancient times, a conventional chronology of the modern battlefield might consider the Spanish Civil War to be the first example of combat of a truly urban nature. The next example should undoubtedly consider the urban devastation of the Second World War, with emphasis on the battles for Stalingrad and Berlin (fought between the army of Nazi Germany and the troops of the Soviet Union for the possession of the cities), as well as the indiscriminate bombing of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo.
Although there were emblematic episodes in which the city was targeted and the fighting took place in urban spaces, a more explicit urban turn only occurred with the United States' experiences in Mogadishu in 1993, with the urban conflict in Sarajevo (1992-1996) and with the Russian experience in Grozny (1994-1995). And, if we consider the most recent examples of urban warfare in Iraq and Syria as part of this chronology, all incidents denote a “historic turn towards urban warfare”, as Anthony King (2021, p. 6) argues.[1]
In the case of warfare in an urban environment, combat in cities is a type of conflict that has its own characteristics, thus requiring new modes of behavior and action from soldiers, due to the presence of many civilians and a built environment that offers extreme complexity to the battlefield. Thus, understanding the urban conflict environment demands a broader conceptual approach, which takes into account the dynamics and complexity of combat in urban spaces.
In this context, British geographer Stephen Graham (2011), an expert on the subject, suggests using the concept of battlespace instead of battlefield, a generally wide and open space. According to Graham, the battlespace does not have front nor rearguard, nor should it be seen as horizontality, but as a deep space with several layers, where combat is always simultaneous with life and any other activity. “The concept of battlespace permeates everything, ranging from the molecular scales of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, through the everyday spaces and experiences of city life, to planetary spheres of space and the cyberspace of the internet that spans the globe” (GRAHAM, 2011, p. 31).
In the perspective emphasized, the battlespace can be any place taken as a battlefield, with different spatial levels or layers, based on the preexisting structures of the place, which are then manipulated by combatants or built for military purposes. These are places where, often, combats occur in “common” or “ordinary” spaces, in the midst of living rooms, schools, industrial areas, hospitals and supermarkets, environments characteristic of urban conflicts.
It should be noted that many of the recognized principles that characterize urban warfare and that are applied today to the densely urbanized and highly populated scenario in cities were already applicable to the reality of the pre-modern period. Therefore, for their better appreciation, John Spencer (2021) offers a useful list of eight criteria to describe the fundamental principles of modern urban warfare, which, according to Morag (2023), can, in summary, be referred to as follows: (i) Defenders almost always have a tactical advantage, especially in cities, although this does not mean that they will necessarily be successful in the operational or strategic plan of a conflict; (ii) urban terrain inhibits the ability of the attacking force to use intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, aerial equipment and engage defenders at a distance.
(iii) Attacking forces have difficulty using the element of surprise, as they are monitored by defending troops, who can remain hidden and thus protect themselves from attack; (iv) buildings, especially those made of reinforced concrete beams or stone, serve as bunkers fortified areas from which defending forces can fire on attacking forces; (v) invaders often use sometimes powerful munitions to access buildings and deny them to defending forces; (vi) defenders have the advantage of relatively free movement within the city and intimate knowledge of the streets, alleys, and mazes—when not under surveillance or attack by unmanned aerial vehicles or other means.
(vii) Defenders can build tunnels, weapons depots, and a variety of other underground facilities and use them to access various locations around the city. Attackers often have little or no knowledge of these locations; (viii) neither the attacking nor the defending forces can deploy their resources in a concentrated location.
The concentration of forces is one of the decisive factors in conventional warfare on the battlefield, since historically the objective of field operations was to concentrate forces in order to decimate the enemy army. The inability to use massed forces has disadvantages for both sides, but in the case of the defensive force on screen, which is an irregular force, and the attack force, which is a modern military force - as has happened in many cases of modern post-World War II urban warfare – the technological, numerical, and training and equipment advantages of a modern army cannot, in many cases, be applied as effectively as would be possible in open war conditions.
Thus, a modern military force is often forced to face a situation where there are irregular fighters, with both sides being broadly matched since they carry similar types of equipment, and the training advantage that a modern soldier has may be somewhat negated by the fact that knowledge of the terrain provides an irregular fighter with the advantage of defense. Furthermore, irregular defenders usually have sufficient time to prepare their city for conflict, including taking measures such as digging tunnels, constructing ammunition dumps, establishing sniper positions, planting booby traps, and planning ambushes.
Thus, urban conflict, often an irregular war fought in built-up areas, differs from conventional open-air combat, both on an operational and tactical level. Factors that include the presence of civilians and the complexity of urban terrain are complicating factors that interfere in the conflict and imply the production of knowledge and tactics for acting in urban space. Danielsson (2024), however, makes a counterpoint, when describing the historical-conceptual trajectory through which the idea of the military urban emerged from the need for a new spatial and epistemic ordering of urban environments, to refer to the practical ways in which a military organization produces knowledge, in the search for achieving military proficiency in an urban environment through administrative actions and surgical interventions, which initially seek to generate less impact or collateral damage.
It is indeed remarkable that the military conflicts in Iraq, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the war in Ukraine also show that the urban environment is treated, even now, with the profound development of technological resources, as a hostile, chaotic, and dangerous space that needs to be tamed or even completely destroyed. Thus, war actions conducted in urban spaces by Israeli, American, and Russian military personnel, which lead to military victories in the urban scenario, aim at the most substantial destruction of urban space, with the purpose of targeting groups that use the built environment as shelter and support for their operations.
Cities and their extensive urban networks provide defense forces, ensconced in buildings and other urban structures, with a defense that is significantly based on urban space through hiding places and defenses mounted in the built environment. It is worth noting that fighters sheltered in urban space can also count on the advantages of extensive civilian cover offered in urban combat. Unlike large, open spaces, urban combat environments are very close to each other; thus, it is very difficult to guarantee the safety of non-combatants in and around buildings.
This limits the freedom of movement of conventional invading forces and makes them more vulnerable to attack, while civilian casualties and property damage can benefit irregular defense forces by drawing attention and anger toward the invading forces. The deaths of innocent people in a city can influence public opinion among the inhabitants in the direction of providing increased support for irregular forces and fueling greater hatred toward the invading forces. Thus, urban defenders enjoy a wide range of advantages, not only tactically, but also in terms of impact on local, national, and global opinion, something that can influence the politics of the invading country, as well as its relations with its allies and trading partners (MORAG, 2023, p. 81).
In this regard, Ukrainian cities have provided an invaluable obstacle to the offensive actions of Russian forces, which “seek to occupy settlements and cities after the suppression and destruction of powerful Ukrainian fortifications, ammunition depots and exhaustion of their reserves, driving advances of light and mechanized infantry only with the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces or widespread destruction of their units. This combat methodology is strongly based on the doctrine employed in the Second Chechen War and the military intervention in Syria, in which significant damage to urban infrastructure is inserted in the context of complete elimination of resistance and subsequent advance to eliminate remaining but exhausted units” (LATERZA et al., 2023, p. 102.)
In the eastern Ukrainian war scenario, Ukrainian forces have deployed extensive defenses in depth along the entire line of contact with the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which, in conjunction with the cities, has required a lot of resources and a high level of tolerance for losses in lives and material on the part of the Russians. It is worth noting that the cities have provided Ukrainian defenders with numerous opportunities to deter and neutralize Russian advances, which they must advance with caution due to the risk of the Russians being lured into a trap.
So far, the Russians have not conquered any city that could be defined as large, either in terms of demographics or urban density, given that advances towards Kiev and Kharkiv, the largest Ukrainian cities, have been prevented by fierce resistance based on urban space. The conquest of dense urban centers requires complex operations given the presence of tall buildings, industrial areas, schools, hospitals, energy distribution centers, as well as streets and avenues of different sizes, among other structures present in Ukraine's extensive urban network (see LATERZA et al..
Like Rodolfo Laterza et al. (2023) help us understand, Ukrainian cities provide many possibilities for defenders, who are succeeding in wearing down Russian troops who venture into urban terrain. Armored advances through the streets make them easy targets, helicopters are equally vulnerable to fire from defense systems installed in the city, while infantry, in order to advance, must clear each building before proceeding, making the advance slow and painful, with a high cost in lives, due to urban resistance, traps, ambushes and other improvised devices installed in urban terrain, streets and buildings.
Therefore, upon taking command of Russian military operations in Ukraine in October 2022, General Sergei Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon”, made tactical changes to Russian military strategy, and in order to avoid casualties and losses of material and facilitate progression in urban terrain, the Russians now seek to encircle cities and use artillery fire to destroy obstacles and clear the terrain, in an attempt to depreciate Ukrainian defenses.
Still according to Rodolfo Laterza et al. (2023), this tactic fulfills the objective of suspending the supply of troops entrenched in the city and thus affecting the subsistence conditions of the Ukrainian resistance. In this regard, artillery attacks, in addition to destroying enemy fortifications, hiding places, equipment and ammunition, aim to level the urban space by destroying buildings, reducing the vertical complexity factor of several layers of the battle space present in buildings.
Tall buildings are occasionally used as observation points and as a means of firing snipers and anti-tank weapons at troops advancing through the streets. Another factor in the complexity of Ukrainian urban space is the presence of tunnels and industrial areas, a feature of the Soviet legacy and therefore common in Ukrainian cities, which provide a multi-layered, i.e. multi-volume, battlefield theater.
Although the Russians are now avoiding invading major urban centers, their advance on the ground in eastern Ukraine necessarily has to deal with the urban issue. Thus, since Ukrainian cities have come to be used to wear down Russian forces, Vladimir Putin's generals have implemented the tactical arrangement of massive urban destruction with artillery strikes and heavy aerial bombardments with the purpose of weakening Ukrainian defenses and shaping the battlefield in favor of the Russians, favoring the advance of invading troops into the destroyed urban void, and only then occupying them.
However, urban warfare in Ukraine is not an issue limited to the military element itself; the Ukrainian scenario also offers additional layers of complexity for the Russians when dealing with the problem of cities. In addition to the difficulty of advancing through urban terrain, many Ukrainian cities are inhabited by a significant Russian population. According to Russian historians, the city of Kiev is the cradle of Russian civilization, and therefore has an important cultural link and a strong identity with Russian civilization, and its complete destruction is not an option at all (see LATERZA et al..
In this way, we can demonstrate that the Russians, by adopting the “method” of urbicide[2] in dealing with Ukrainian urban centers, applied with military violence to achieve political objectives through the deliberate destruction of the built environment, they seek to avoid large urban centers, given the difficulties imposed on military advance over urbanized terrain and due to sensitive issues of identity and possible damage to Russian architecture and history shared with Ukrainians.
In their advance through eastern Ukraine, the Russians have opted for attacks against small and medium-sized urban settlements, although of significant value; these centers minimize the number of losses among the civilian population and require less demand on Russian troops compared to an incursion into Kiev, which is currently, for example, outside Moscow's plans.
Thus, it is important to emphasize that the tactics of destroying Ukrainian cities and towns, even on a massive scale, do not aim at the total and definitive destruction of Ukrainian urban space. It should be remembered that Ukrainian settlements are also places inhabited by Russians; therefore, Moscow's military actions should not be seen only as a war of infamous or senseless conquest and destruction, but rather as a military action to occupy and organize the Russian cultural and political space in the region in a strategic sense. From this perspective, especially in the context of the urbanicide carried out in Ukraine, although genuine in its destructive characteristics, it also implies urbanization as a measure of (re)territorialization of the interests of Moscow and the Russian population in that region.
*Marcio Jose Mendonca holds a PhD in geography from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES).
References
DANIELSSON, Anna. The emergence of a military urban in and of war. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, p.1-15, Nov. 2024.
GRAHAM, Stephen. Cities under siege: the new military urbanism. London: Verse, 2011.
KING, Anthony. Urban warfare in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2021.
LATERZA, Rodolfo Queiroz [et al.]. War in Ukraine: Analysis and Perspective: The Military Conflict That is Changing Global Geopolitics. New York: Routledge, 2023.
MORAG, Nadav. Urban warfare: the recent Israeli experience. Journal of Strategic Security, v. 16, no. 3, p. 78-99, 2023.
SPENCER, John. The eight rules of urban warfare and why we must work to change them. Modern War Institute, December 1, 2021. Available here.
Notes
[1] See also GRAHAM, 2011; and DANIELSSON, 2024.
[2] “Urbicide” is understood as military practices and means intended for political purposes, which ultimately aim, in addition to defeating the enemy, to destroy its habitat, denying it the city and urban space as a substrate for reproduction or hiding. Thus, what we are seeing in Ukraine is a process of destruction of urban space with the aim of denying it to the enemy as a space of resistance. In simple terms, it is a form of violence against the city and its inhabitants, in other words, a deliberate action of destruction of the built environment and the urbanity that facilitates life in the city, with the intention of achieving a political purpose through the use of force. For more details, see “Battlespace and urbicide in the city of Rio de Janeiro” (MENDONÇA, 2022).
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