Russian general Sergey Surovikin has a reputation for ruthlessness. Appointed the Russian military’s overall commander on October 8, the day the strategically vital Kerch Bridge was targeted by an explosion that badly damaged Russia’s main road and rail connection with Crimea, he has ordered savage drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure. Strikes on the capital Kyiv and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv have left large swaths of those cities without water and electricity.
Surovikin clearly hopes this is a strategy that will destroy civilian morale and cripple the Ukrainian will to resist. The 2016 targeting by Russia of non-combatant facilities such as hospitals in the Syrian city of Aleppo offer a model for his approach. But this was backed by Syrian regime forces on the ground. My research into UK newspaper coverage of the second world war suggests his approach will fail.
Germany’s second world war blitz on Britain for eight months between September 7, 1940, and May 11, 1941, for example. In the first phase, London was attacked on 57 consecutive nights. Houses, shops, factories, hospitals and schools were destroyed. Some 43,000 civilians were killed and one in six Londoners made homeless.
