An article published by the American newspaper (New York Times) warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is applying in his current war in Ukraine the same approach that his forces adopted during their military intervention in Syria.
Brett Stevens, a New York Times columnist, said Putin's military strategy in Ukraine is to starve and intimidate Ukrainians and deny them electricity, using drone strikes that target water supplies and energy infrastructure in an effort to impede Ukrainian forces in the winter.
In the context of warning of the possibility of the success of the Russian president’s strategy, Stevens recalled the American position on the Russian military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, where former US President Barack Obama said at the time, “The efforts of Russia and Iran to support Assad and try to calm the people will not succeed and they will find themselves Finally stuck in a quagmire.
But days have proven the incorrectness of the American assessment, according to Stevens, who says that things ended in what Obama did not expect. The Russian army, led by officers some of whom are now leading the Russian war in Ukraine, achieved an unexpected victory over the Syrian people who were brutally suppressed and the American administration that chose to deceive. Same about the situation in Syria.
The article noted that the decisive factor that enabled the Russian forces to achieve their goals in Syria was the large-scale premeditated and indiscriminate killings they practiced against Syrian civilians.
massive destruction
This is the approach that Putin is now adopting in Ukraine with the help of Iranian rallies, Stevens said.
Last Monday, Russian strikes cut off 80% of Kyiv's population, according to estimates by the city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
Dozens of power facilities in the city were also bombed.
He believed that Putin was seeking, by targeting energy and water supply facilities, to put pressure on Kyiv to bring it to the negotiating table and reach an agreement that would allow Moscow to keep the Ukrainian lands it seized during the war.
At the conclusion of his article, Stevens called on America and the West to confront Putin's strategy in Ukraine by taking a number of measures, including providing Kyiv with more qualitative weapons that would enable it to repel the Russian attack before the onset of winter.