History Shows that Terror Bombing like Moscow’s in Ukraine Now Won’t By Itself Bring Victory, Shirogorova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – Vladimir Putin clearly hopes to bomb Ukraine into submission with his massive air raids on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, but he will not succeed by such a policy on its own, however horrific, Sofiya Shirogorova says, because history shows that “terror bombing doesn’t work.”

            The Russian expert on military history who fled the country after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine says that as a result of terror bombing, “people die, cities, burn, and live in them becomes unbearable;” but despite all that, this tactic “does not bring victory” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=638C0C7F4B7D7).

            Instead, it may have exactly the opposite effect as was the case in Germany during World War II. There, Germans subjected to mass bombing campaigns were motivated as a result to fight to the last rather than give up. In that conflict, and again now, the outcome of the war will be decided by the operations of “conventional land forces.”

            There, Russia does not have the advantage it thought it did; and its shortcomings in that regard may be why Putin has turned to the use of terror bombing. As such, it is a mark of the weakness of his position not its strength and may mean that Ukrainians will now fight even harder to defeat the Russian invaders.