Question: Russia is shelling peaceful cities in the north of the country with artillery and inflicting airstrikes on them. This leads to many civilian casualties which is meaningless in terms of winning the war. Why is Putin doing that?
Answer: To analyze the situation, you should first remove emotional expressions from your personal vocabulary, no matter how difficult it may be. Of course, we will not get away from emotions. However, they should be put away in a separate basket of consciousness for a while. Let us start with the "absurdity" and then try to find there at least something rational.
Russian military science has given much thought to the so-called "sixth-generation war" from the attack on Georgia in 2008 (some experts date it back to the First Chechen War) to the beginning of the last wave of intervention in Ukraine. I will not overload you with Moscow's military considerations; it sounds like that in a nutshell.
According to both military and civilian experts, we divide the military thoughts into four groups. It is not only one Gerasimov whose article was miraculously called "the doctrine".
The type of attack that has now taken place is entirely at odds with the views of all four groups regarding the conditions under which the Russian military can maintain combat capability for a long time in conditions of an offensive. They all agreed that the total offensive, as it is today in Ukraine, is a cave archaic of military affairs.
They agreed that the material and technical capabilities of the Russian army were far from propagandistic perfection. They emphasized that the coordination between the armies in such a massive attack would rapidly weaken and that mass airborne landing (so-called "vertical envelopment") was ineffective in the previous century and sounded even more idiotic in the 21st century. They said that effective control of our territory by the Rosgvardiya, even together with various Wagner's militants and the police, is impossible with the current qualifications and number of these structures. It will generate resistance instead of the expected loyalty. The experts advised that three-quarters of success should be provided by reliable, not politicized, intelligence, and so on. That is, everything that is happening now, including the losses and defeats of the Russian army, analysts in Russia predicted. It is wild to read it now, but there have been such discussions.
Nevertheless, the maniac decided to do what his sick fantasies told him. Do you remember Russia's chief intelligence officer's facial expression showing panic in the Federation Council if I am not mistaken? Does it mean that was a person who, to put it mildly, is aware of the possible risks? Definitely! It means: "Our Führer is completely out of his mind".
One day, scientific papers will analyze crazy Putin\'s behaviour the same way as they did regarding Hitler. As in the case of Hitler, the Russian military is forced to translate his paranoid delusion into the language of military orders.
I suppose he chose the northern direction as the main one after the Russian army began to lose the pace of the offensive in the south and did not advance at all in the east. The Chernobyl zone as a breakthrough corridor, "logistics packages" (which the press sometimes mistakenly calls "convoys") with food and fuel supplies to the forefront, and relatively safe deployment of manpower. However, to the Russian's surprise, the human resources quickly turned dead, and the beaten Katsap equipment became a reliable obstacle to further advancement. The unexploded shells are lying around - there is no way for equipment to go through them. They are looking for new roads, but they are also beaten there. Meanwhile, the Führer demands new quick victories.
Destructing the city's infrastructure and killing civilians is a part of another scenario after the blitzkrieg failed. Our experts call it "Afghan", although I call it "Syrian", remembering the fate of Aleppo. The scenario has such a name because they seem to be pushing Yanukovych for the role of Assad (in the "Syrian" version of the scenario), the same story as the Soviet Union once put its Hafizullah Amin in Afghanistan after the invasion. By the way, that is a good illustration showing how inadequate Putin is.
Putin wants to put our country in ruins so that it can live off the UN humanitarian aid and so that different groups can constantly shoot at each other; to leave the ongoing civil war. What the reader now thinks of Putin is the diagnosis of the Russian president.
In other words, now the Russians are trying to destroy everything. Here we can recall the Soviets, who blew up Kyiv with radio-controlled landmines in the autumn of 1941, so Hitler was not the only one.
In Putin's sick imagination, the destruction of infrastructure, the despair of civilians, and the humanitarian catastrophe "effective" means of putting pressure on President Zelenskyy through so-called "proxies". It is the very proxy war, or as journalists often call it, a "hybrid" war. It aims to put pressure on the national stability and will of the Ukrainian leadership through the sensitive non-military component. It must be clearly understood that a large-scale military invasion does not negate hybridity in any case. We are forced to pay attention to the actual military component, but the sabotage, espionage, information and psychological components are no less essential.
At first glance, there is no point in destroying Ukraine in case of common sense for Russia. Moreover, people with signs of common sense warned their stupid leaders about the consequences of irrational political decisions. Even the youngest group of Russian analysts produced such a muffled murmur that the political whims of Russian politicians are poorly converted into the military-technical reality of the Russian army; in the case of world politics, they do not fit at all.
While ending my answer to the question, I will say two news - bad and good. The bad one is that the more our army will kill and chase the Russians, the more the whole world will multiply them to zero in other areas, the more their leader will go mad and give orders to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. Therefore, we should say goodbye to fantasies about their observance of the laws and customs of war and prepare accordingly.
There are even two good pieces of news. If the army exceeds 10% -15% loss on the offensive (and it may apply to each specific unit, it is not necessary to wait for the total figure), the demoralization of personnel is inevitable. Their current characteristics may vary depending on the circumstances, but this is a military-scientific fact. It means that the units that have seen killing their soldiers in such a proportion are at least good candidates for captivity and other useful matters unless they are gunners. As an old friend and assistant of the Special Operations Forces, I can say that for sure.
The second good news is that the absurdity of orders will increase, and their implementation will lead to the gradual collapse of the whole group. That is the reference to Hitler's situation, especially in 1944-1945. I guess, in our case, the final will be the same with the bunker.