NEW DELHI: In just two days of fighting, the Russian army—in a blitzkrieg style attack—is reported to have reached the outskirts of many Ukrainian cities. While the urban centres had been targeted by Russian aircraft, missiles and artillery bombings from Thursday morning onwards when the war began, the actual decisive battle in modern warfare begins and ends when the fighting takes place inside the cities and urban centres ‘street by street’ by boots on the ground. This is also the ugliest part of a war when the numbers of body bags on all sides rise.
According to media reports, on Saturday, the first city—Melitopol, in Ukraine’s southeast—has fallen. It is only a question of time before key cities including capital Kyiv, Odessa and Karkhiv fall unless negotiations, if at all they take place, provide alternatives. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenkskyy has asserted that he will not surrender.
According to Ukraine’s health minister Viktor Lyashko about 200 people have lost their lives till now while more than a thousand have been wounded. While the Chernobyl nuclear plant has been overtaken by the Russians, city dwellers including in the capital Kyiv are getting ready for the fight with an estimated 80,000 guns being already distributed among them while quick Do It Yourself (DIY) lessons were being imparted to make Molotov cocktails. But the urban battle won’t be an easy one unlike the fighting in the hinterlands and the outlying areas.
Also read: Have Big Powers pushed Ukraine to Disaster?
The battle in Kyiv is likely to begin with a siege or encirclement, making it the second time that the capital will make headlines for a ‘siege’. The first siege—understood to be the biggest encirclement in the history of warfare—was during Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The soldiers of Nazi Germany encircled and trapped Soviet soldiers in the city of Kyiv for 50 days from August 7-September 26, 1941.
When the Germans finally moved in, more than 700,000 Russian soldiers had died—making it among the most devastating incidents in Russian military history. What the Russian forces are likely to do is to try and lay a siege or encircle Kyiv. The classical Russian tactic is to overwhelm by sheer numbers.
For that, they will need more troops that will have to be brought in. This consolidation will take some time, at the same time allowing the Ukrainians to mobilize in whatever way possible. With all physically fit Ukrainian civilians up to 60 years of age being asked to bear arms and with tension running high, there is a good chance that the Russians will have to fight their way in, in places and streets that the Ukrainians are familiar with.
Last but not the least, Ukrainians are known to be very hardy fighters who will give no quarter easily. Russians have a tough fight on their hands.
Also read: Ukraine war grand opportunity for India
