Putin Revives 'Grozny-fication' Bombardment of Ukraine — SkimNews
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- Russia launched its heaviest drone and rocket attack yet on Kyiv last Tuesday, firing 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles, and ballistic rockets at residential areas and killing 21 residents, including children
- Subsequent attacks over the following days killed more than 100 people across at least four cities; 22 bodies were recovered from a shattered apartment building in Pryluky, and glide-bombs killed 15 civilians in Zaporizhia, site of a nuclear power plant
- The strategy, dubbed the "Grozny Model" or "Peace Through Obliteration," traces to the 1999-2009 Chechen war and was later deployed in Aleppo in 2016 and Mariupol in 2022 to empty cities of civilians and isolate fighters
- Russian ground forces are bogged down along the Dnieper River and unlikely to break through westward, making city bombardment a substitute for ground entry, per the Institute for the Study of War
- Trump publicly urged Zelensky to "get a new president" for Ukraine and warned him to "better damn well stop" targeting Russian oil refineries, which the article identifies as a key war-funding source for Moscow
- Trump's reported decision to buy Russian diesel to lower US fuel prices before November elections undercuts Western sanctions and has outraged the EU, which supplies Ukraine's defense equipment
Why it matters: Putin's documented pattern across three wars shows aerial city-bombing succeeds in depopulating and destroying infrastructure but at a cost of 'massive opposition losses,' per analysts cited. Trump's simultaneous public pressure on Zelensky to halt refinery strikes — while Trump reportedly buys Russian diesel — gives Putin a financial opening at a moment when EU-backed military supplies are already strained and US elections could shift the political ground beneath Kyiv.
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