Is the Russian army doing a similar action in the battle of Kyiv as in the Chechen wars and bombing the city heavily? Many residents fear this, and a military expert sees the Russian Army in a tactical dilemma.

The Russian president made it clear what was self-evident and there was no reason to contradict it. Vladimir Putin said in 2004 after a flight over the Chechen capital that Grozny looked „simply appalling”. Russia has declared the end of the second war against separatists in the Caucasus, and Putin has surveyed a city that has become a modern symbol of the Russian war. What the residents of Grozny suffered can now threaten also the residents of Kyiv and Kharkiv, and this is not only feared in Ukraine.

After two wars, Grozny was largely destroyed. During the first Chechen war in 1994/1995 the Russian army besieged the city for weeks and bombarded it with artillery for days. Russian forces also attacked the city from the air. It is estimated that 25,000 people died.

In the second shortest Chechen war since mid-1999, the city was again attacked from the air and artillery and captured by Russian forces in the early 2000s. In 2002, the United Nations ranked Grozny as the worst-hit city in the world.

Uwe Halbach, an expert on Caucasus affairs, says the consequences for the civilian population were „devastating during the massive stages of the war”. Take the two wars together, the death toll is estimated to be between 100,000 and close to 200,000 people. Thus, according to Halbach, „the Chechen wars constituted the worst violent event in the post-Soviet region.”

’brutal approach’

Will the people of Kyiv now have to adapt to this scenario? „The Russian armed forces are primarily an artillery army,” says Vienna military analyst Franz-Stephan Gade. The Russian military relies on „firepower” which – along with air strikes and large-scale bombing – aims to intimidate the population and clear the way for its forces. Gadi fears that this „frontal and brutal approach” will appear in Kyiv.

The Russian army is primarily interested in avoiding a long battle in the city, he analyzes – here memories of the Chechen wars, as well as the Georgian war in 2008, also play a role on the part of the attackers.

helpless as in Afghanistan

In Chechnya, the Russian army showed itself to be very vulnerable to the guerrilla tactics of Chechen fighters in the first war. „As in Afghanistan, the Russian army was hardly able to fight between the partisans,” recalls Uwe Halbach. In the second Chechen war, from 2001 on, they increasingly handed over the fight against separatists to the local armed forces led by the Kadyrov clan.

Gadi says that in 2008 he showed a serious inability to manage battles, security of communications, and communication between individual units – at times the smaller Georgian army was superior to the Russian armed forces. In the end, they „overpowered the bulk of the Russian armed forces.”

Problems still exist

Military observers are aware of some of these problems—to their surprise—so far in the Ukraine war. Ex-NATO General Hans Lothar Domrose Difficult but fair About the fact that at the beginning of the war not all branches of the armed forces were widely coordinated and deployed.

Military analyst Gadi is also surprised that the army has shown itself to be „relatively weak” in the „combined arms battle” and appears to have „learned no more lessons” from past wars. There are indications that the military has no experience in „urban” combat as one might expect.

Siege and shoot

From this point of view, Gadi concludes that the Russian armed forces will also choose the brutal approach in Kyiv and develops this scenario: a siege ring could be formed around the city in order to subsequently intimidate the population with targeted bombing and artillery fire. And then it will have the opportunity to leave the city through humanitarian corridors „so as not to completely destroy Russia’s international reputation” – but also to facilitate urban combat.

Western military experts agree that the leadership of the Russian army could not be interested in a long battle inside the city. All the time, the great motivation of the Ukrainians, the shortcomings of the Russian army and the strategic advantage that even inexperienced fighters in a defensive position had, were noted.

Experience has shown that the attacking arm needs up to five fighters for a cannon, in a city like Kyiv, this ratio can rise to ten to one. Jade notes that „Russia simply does not have that many fighters.”

This in turn increases the dilemma of the attacker. Because the Russian army had to rely on increased artillery fire. Destroyed buildings are „complete defenses”. And the will to fight on the Ukrainian side is very high – perhaps because they don’t even know what urban combat really means, which Gadi says is „the most brutal kind of war”.

Chechnya as a deterrent?

Perhaps for this reason, even in the first days of the war, rumors were circulating that the Russian army also wanted to use Chechen units in the fight against the Ukrainians. They have been considered particularly unscrupulous since the two wars.

The French expert on Russia and the Caucasus Jean-Francois Ratel sees no signs of this – he considers such rumors to be part of psychological warfare. The goal is „to make the Ukrainians believe that what happened in Chechnya will also happen in Ukraine: that they will flee in the city, that there will be looting, rape and murder,” the magazine Foreign Policy quotes the French people.

So far, cities have already been bombed, sometimes with cluster munitions. Attempts to capture major cities such as Kharkiv could initially be repelled. But the attacks are growing in intensity, increasingly injuring civilians, while Russia continues to increase its forces.

Thus the Grozny scenario is also one of the many uncertainties and remains part of the guesswork about Russian plans in this war.