SICKENING EVIL
Putin is using the Syria playbook in his war with Ukraine – world should expect chemical weapons and hospital bombings
AS the world woke up yesterday to news that Russia had attacked a nuclear power station, everyone was asking: “Will Vladimir Putin use his nukes?”
The answer is not yet — if ever.
4
4
But if the Russian leader plans to raise the stakes and ramp up the terror another notch he may threaten chemical weapons next.
Amazingly, in his invasion of Ukraine, Putin is using the Syria “playbook”.
Step by step he is following the battle plan the Russians used in the Middle East and his own territory of Chechnya, which reduced thriving cities to rubble.
In 2013 the Kremlin was behind President Assad’s chemical attacks in Syria. The Russians approved the idea of using banned chemical weapons and let the Syrians carry out those attacks on their own people.
The world had been holding the line against chemical warfare for almost 100 years since the Great War, until 2013 when Assad and Putin crossed the line and we let them do it.
Bigger disaster
US President Barack Obama was ready for strikes on Syria in retaliation but he didn’t carry them out because we in Britain backed away.
Here we are, ten years later, and chemical weapons are looming on the agenda.
I am not totally convinced that the Russian bombing of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant was planned by the Kremlin.
Such an act is against the Geneva Convention.
Most read in The Sun
But if this totally dangerous ploy was approved by Putin then it was designed to terrorise Europe by using another type of “nuclear threat”.
It would send out a message to the West: “This crisis is dangerous — don’t mess with me.”
🔵 Read our Russia - Ukraine live blog for the very latest updates
I think it is more likely that the totally reckless bombing of the plant with its six nuclear reactors was strategic stupidity by local commanders on the ground.
The Ukrainians had wrongly assumed a 30km “exclusion zone” would protect the reactor, the largest in Europe, which provides electricity for four million homes.
The Russian commanders will have realised that any plant that provides a fifth of all Ukraine’s electricity makes it a a good target to squeeze the whole critical infrastructure of the country.
Russian commanders may have regarded this as a legitimate target but lobbing inaccurate artillery shells is a really stupid way to go about it.
I am fairly sure staff at the nuclear complex and Ukrainian commanders effectively surrendered the plant to the Russians to prevent another Chernobyl or Fukushima.
With a training building ablaze close to the reactors, the Ukrainians begged the Russians to stop shelling, and gave up the plant to stop an even bigger disaster.
Thankfully, five of the six reactors at Zaporizhzhya were already out of action and engineers were able to close down the one that was working, preventing deadly radioactive leaks.
On the tenth day of fighting, Russia’s war in Ukraine is unfolding the way it fought first in Chechnya and later in Syria.
By last night the Russians had surrounded five major cities in Ukraine and they were relentlessly bombarding them.
All you need to know about Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Everything you need to know about Russia's invasion of Ukraine...
- Why is Russia invading Ukraine?
- Will the UK go to war?
- How can I join the Ukraine foreign legion?
- What can I do to help Ukraine?
- Who is Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy?
- How much gas does the UK get from Russia?
- Is Russia a part of Nato?
- Does ?
- Why is Ukraine not in Nato?
- How big is the Russian army?
- What is of the Nato treaty?
- What is the Minsk agreement?
- Which countries were in the Soviet Union?
Two of those encircled cities, Mariupol and Kharkiv, are being brutalised to put psychological pressure on Kyiv to say to the government: “You see what’s coming. It’s your choice”.
The Russians never attack cities directly.
Instead, they pummel areas around the city first and, only when they think the population are disoriented and suffering, will troops and armour move in.
That is what they did in the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Idlib.
At Idlib in 2019, they bombed all the hospitals first. Aid workers gave the coordinates of hospitals in the hope that the Russians and Syrians would avoid them — believing they would never deliberately commit an act so evil.
But they used those very coordinates deliberately to shell the hospitals. At Idlib, 24 medical centres were bombed first.
Bombing hospitals means that civilians suffer more, allowing forces to move in quickly. It is an absolutely brutal way of thinking.
Analysts have not been able to confirm that the Russians are prepared to carry out public executions in the streets to bring more terror to civilians. But when so many lines are being crossed, it sadly remains plausible.
Battle plan
In the south of Ukraine, Putin’s troops are heading towards Odessa, the port where 70 per cent of the besieged country’s supplies arrive.
An amphibious task force is poised in the Black Sea to work with Russian troops on the ground to take the city in the next few days.
If Odessa falls, Putin will have cut off Ukraine from the sea and supplies will only be able to enter the country overland.
Meanwhile, up north, the 40-mile Russian military supply convoy is still at a standstill after three days.
But it is ready to supply fuel and logistics to the Battalion Tactical Groups that are moving west and south to eventually surround the capital Kyiv.
When Kyiv is encircled, the Russians will demand to President Zelenskyy:
“Are you ready to give up?”
That is the next stage of Putin’s battle plan.
Whatever happens, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has emerged from nowhere as a true hero and greatest leader of the 21st century.
But a quarter of the way through this century, Vladimir Putin is a villain on the scale of Mussolini and Hitler.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
There is no rehabilitation for him. I am absolutely convinced of that.
But sadly, only the Chinese can make him stop.
4
4
Topics