Ruining Ukrainian cities with bombs and artillery is unlikely to have the effect Putin desires—of forcing a Ukrainian surrender—but it will make urban warfare more difficult. The U.S. military can attest to the challenge of urban combat for an occupying force. The challenge is even more difficult in destroyed cities. The grandparents and great-grandparents of the Russian privates in Ukraine, some of whom fought at Stalingrad, would know this well.
By cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea, Putin may be attempting something like a large-scale siege of the entire country. But as long as Ukraine’s borders with its four NATO-member neighbors—Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria—remain open, this seems unlikely to succeed. And this strategy has a mixed record anyway—history is replete with examples of armies that gave up or ran out of supplies before the fall of the cities they were besieging.
Putin is wasting the time he doesn’t have to adopt a new strategy. His economy is collapsing, and soon he will find it difficult to pay his troops (at least, in any money with appreciable value) and feed his people. The longer this drags out, the likelier it becomes that one or more of his subordinates or super-rich allies will turn on him, a possibility he is wary of and is trying to preempt by purging senior officials. When the military starts to disobey orders and/or Putin’s war chest runs out of money, he won’t be able to adopt a winning strategy even if he could think of one.
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