Consider This from NPR - How Russia's Past Military Campaigns Can Help Us Understand What's Next In Ukraine

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

The scenes of devastation in Mariupol, a southeastern port city in Ukraine, are increasingly reflected in cities across the country as Russian forces advance. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the port city since the start of Russia's invasion. A humanitarian crisis is deepening, as residents say they can't find drinking water or food, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says they cannot get emergency supplies in.Journalists Maura Reynolds and David Filipov both reported on Russia's military campaigns in Chechnya. Olga Oliker of International Crisis Group is an expert on Russian military strategy. They talk about the lessons learned from past Russian actions in Chechnya, and later in Georgia and Syria, to help explain what could come next in Ukraine.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A humanitarian crisis is deepening in Ukraine as Russia intensifies its attacks on civilian areas. With Russian tanks repeatedly firing on apartment buildings and the town. In the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, more than 2,000 people have been killed since the start of Russia's invasion. We have no drinking water, One Mariupol resident told The Guardian, we have no food. We can't live like this, she said. And Martin Shrubby of the International Committee of the Red Cross says they can't get emergency supplies to people there. They managed to help together with the Ukrainian

Red Cross. Some of the medical stations provide first aid. However, today the situation is such that they themselves are out of basics, out of food, out of water, out of everything, and they themselves have to scramble for their lives. Russian forces have shelled residential buildings, hospitals, a mosque in the port city, and Russia's track record in other wars suggests that the worst may be yet to come. There's a fairly unmistakable pattern, and that is that when Russian forces meet resistance, whether that was in Chechnya, whether that was in Syria, their response is usually to double down and use levels of force, including against civilian populations, that many people find shocking.

Consider this. The scenes of devastation in Mariupol are increasingly reflected in cities across Ukraine as Russian forces advance. We look at Russia's recent military campaigns to glimpse what they might tell us about what happens next in Ukraine. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It is Monday, March 14th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Video footage shows the aftermath of a maternity hospital bombing last week. All the windows blown out, there is debris everywhere. Inside, a frantic search for survivors. The photo of a pregnant woman on a stretcher as she is rushed from the hospital captured worldwide attention. The Associated Press reports that she and her baby have died.

For journalists like Maura Reynolds, who've covered Russia's military actions, these scenes in Ukraine are grimly familiar. I think anyone who visited Chechnya during or after either war is having flashbacks when we look at the pictures right now of what's happening. You know, and we know, those of us who were there, what it looked like in the end. And we feared the same thing could happen in Ukraine. My colleague Sarah McCammon has more.

One word kept coming up when Maura Reynolds talked to survivors of the Russian military campaign in Chechnya. The word they would use over and over again was kashmar, you know, nightmare. But that's trivial compared to what they really experienced. Two decades before this current war in Ukraine, Russia launched its second war in Chechnya, a majority Muslim republic that's part of Russia. Reynolds was the LA Times Moscow correspondent back then, and she remembers then-President Boris Yeltsin and then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin characterizing the mission as a campaign to stamp out, quote, bandits and terrorists.

It was a chorus, bandits and terrorists, just like you hear Russian officials, including Putin now, talk about, you know, Nazis. David Filipov was in the Chechen capital Grozny in 1999 when the Russian offensive began. He was reporting for the Boston Globe, and he says there was a pattern. First, airstrikes, then a city would be surrounded. Then, essentially, everybody in the area is now part of the war. There is no safe zone. And then it's anything goes. In both Chechen wars, he remembers indiscriminate,

apparently targeted attacks on civilians. I've seen Russians bombard, you know, an outdoor auto parts market because that's where there are a lot of people, or a fountain that has running water in a city that has no running water. And it just basically tells people in that area, there's no life here for you. You have to leave. And for those who tried to leave, even humanitarian corridors held risks. My colleagues and I interviewed people who were leaving through those corridors, and they all reported being fired upon.

You know, it got to the point where the civilians who were left didn't know whether it was safer to stay in their basements or safer to try to leave. I mean, it was a catch-22 for them. After the war ended, Reynolds says very little was left of Grosny. The ground was literally charred. There were very few buildings in the center of Grozny still standing. The remains of a wall here and there and not much else. All the trees were burned, you know, had lost all their branches and leaves.

Even though it was spring, there was no green. There was no sign of life. We wanted to learn more about the lessons of Russia's military campaigns in Chechnya and later in Georgia and Syria to understand what might unfold next in Ukraine. So we called up Olga Olikar of the international crisis group Think Tank, an expert on Russia's combat strategies. The Russian approach to warfare tends to emphasize what military analysts like to call fires, which is bombardment, it's artillery strikes, it's missile strikes. Russians have historically referred to artillery as the god of war. That tends to also involve

civilian casualties. You know, I think because of that, Russians have a reputation for not minding if civilians die, fairly or unfairly. And I think you can make an argument in some cases looking at how they fight, that it might be partially intentional, there might be targeting of civilian populations in order to try to convince an adversary to back down. You sound uncertain about whether it's intentional. I mean, some of the reports we're seeing from Ukraine, it Ukraine certainly appear intentional. Yeah, but there are people in Afghanistan and Iraq who will tell you that when the United States hits civilian infrastructure, hits places where people live, that's intentional. So if it's intentional, it's a war crime. It is really hard to prove. That's why I'm careful with how I describe it. What about the accusations of violating humanitarian corridors, firing on evacuation points that were supposed to be set up to allow civilians to get out?

So, again, it sure looks bad. You've got an agreement to evacuate civilians, and then there's Russian shelling of the places where the civilians are being evacuated. And it is reminiscent also of things we saw in Syria. But again, if you're going to try to prove that in a court, it's going to be hard to prove. As you've mentioned, the U.S. certainly has its history of civilian casualties in countries where it operates. I mean, one of the last U.S. military actions in the war in Afghanistan, which I think you alluded to, was a drone strike that killed innocent children. The Pentagon said they were intending to hit the planners of an earlier attack at the Kabul

airport. Do you see a fundamental difference, though, between these approaches, the U.S. approach and the Russian approach? So I think that overall, the United States takes greater pains, whether it's from a legalistic standpoint or through their own perception of morals, to avoid civilian casualties, though I don't think that's always successful. If you look at how Russians fight, you know, historically, it certainly looks like civilian casualties aren't as big a worry to them. You know, this said, you can also attribute some of it to not having as much in the way of precision munitions, etc., etc., but, you know, the effects of a Russian

war do tend to involve a lot of dead civilians. How does that history on the part of the U.S. undermine the ability of the U.S. to criticize Russia at this moment? You know, I don't think it necessarily does. It does give the Russians something to push back on. And arguably, it gives the Russians a playbook and a script for what they say when they're accused of targeting civilian populations, right? The Americans said that they were targeting fighters, the Russians say they were targeting fighters. But I think in general, look, the international community exists to call states out for bad behavior, even if other states are guilty of similar bad behavior.

Is there a cost to Russia if it kills a large number of civilians during this campaign? I mean, it brings international condemnation, but does Russia care about that? We saw them really trying to avoid civilian casualties in the first days of the war. And I do think part of that was based on an expectation that the Ukrainian population was a friendly population. Once you've realized that the people aren't really with you, you might not have quite as many scruples. But if you're still planning on occupying the parts of Ukraine you're currently bombing, occupying them will be that much harder. what has happened is plan A failed, and plan B militarily is this reversion to a very heavy artillery and missile approach. And the question of, okay, so what are we going to do with that next? What happens if we win? I'm not sure has been really unpacked.

Considering Russia's strategy in previous conflicts, what are you expecting to see next? And how concerned are you? So I expect to see more and worse, honestly. You know, if you look at Syria, if you look at Chechnya, they could do a lot more damage. And my expectation is that they probably will. So, you know, this does worry me a great deal because it's going to kill a lot of people and do a lot of damage. Olga Oligar is program director for Europe and Central Asia with the International Crisis Group, a think tank focused on conflict prevention. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.