Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defences in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.
For months, Ukraine has also fought an increasingly damaging drone war against the refineries and airfields of Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter, though major drone attacks on the Moscow region - with a population of over 21 million - have been rarer.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences destroyed a total of 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region, 23 over the border region of Bryansk, six over the Belgorod region, three over the Kaluga region and two over the Kursk region.
Honest question, how does this mesh with sieges of cities in earlier periods of history? When cities would surrender because of sieges. What are the differences?
Also, to add to the other poster’s point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That’s why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.
In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, “Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you” is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn’t really openly used. In fact, guidelines like “proportionality” are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.
So, if you’re a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you’re bombing the suburbs, you’ll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can’t guarantee every bomb will hit it’s target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you’re never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There’s enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.
Enemy resolve is such an important and yet tricky factor.
A big part of the reason the US failed in Vietnam, despite having an overwhelming military advantage, was an unwillingness by the US to just burn the whole country to the ground, and the attitude of the NVA and VietCong being that they would either win or die trying. Bombing campaign after bombing campaign didn’t change that.
I doubt the Russians have the same resolve. Especially since they’re the demoralized aggressor at this point. Ukraine has to work very carefully to achieve their strategic objectives without Galvanizing the Russian population. Quitting has to feel like a better option than fighting back.
Interesting! Just a question, are you saying that the Germans were holding back during their bombing runs of London? I’m no history expert, but that doesn’t sound right to me, and if it is, I’d love to know more about it.
I don’t they were holding back. Hitler isn’t particularly known for his restraint. It was just more rudimentary technology. There were only around 2000ish planes on either side, and they weren’t committing everything every day. The planes were smaller, the bombs weren’t as destructive, and targeting was pretty basic. They absolutely did tons of damage, but it took months.
Carrying out a similar engagement today would level a city in hours, maybe days.
Right, I was just misunderstanding your statement, then. Thanks for the interesting read!
No, it was not my intention to suggest that. I’m sure the Germans threw everything they could afford into the Battle of Britain.
Though, I am most definitely not an expert in the field and should be treated as I am, a dude on the internet lol.
However, even Germany in early WW2 (arguably at the height of their power) was unable to throw enough explosives into London to make that switch flip in the civilian population from “we shall fight them on the beaches” to “okay, in light of recent events, we are reevaluating our ‘Never Surrender’ policy…”.
In fact, I might even suggest that the scale of bombing necessary to make it a viable tactic was impossible at that time, as the nuclear bomb hadn’t yet been invented. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can fact check this assertion, but I think the only time intentionally targeting civilians has successfully cowed a belligerent was when the US nuked Japan. And even then, it took two.
And even that is debatable. Japanese surrender came shortly after a quick succession of several events - the first bomb at Hiroshima, Soviet Union declaring war and invading continental Japanese land, the second bomb at Nagasaki, allies completely obliterating Japanese navy, and preparing to invade their home islands, etc.
Many argue that Japan would surrender even without the two nuclear bombs.
100%. I know that the jury is out, academically speaking, on the actual effectiveness of the bombs, but it makes intuitive sense to me that they at least contributed to the Japanese decision to surrender unconditionally.
In fact, up until the bombs were dropped, Japan was working with the Soviet Union to act as mediators in peace talks, so Japan could get a better deal. Of course, while the USSR entertained the diplomatic overtures from Japan, they were actually planning on declaring war, as they had promised at Yalta. But, I think it still contributes to my point that a civilian population that has been targeted by a besieging force must believe their only options are unconditional surrender or utter destruction (which, incidentally, is exactly the verbiage the US presented Japan in the Potsdam Declaration 10 days before the first bomb was dropped). If there is a plausible third option available (or believed to be available), then that’s what will be pursued.
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Ye olde sieges cut off supply lines and forced the defenders to subsist on rations. Once those started running low, they started starving. Eventually the options were starve to death or surrender. These sieges frequently lasted months and sometimes years. Given travel times, it could also be weeks before anyone realized something was wrong and mobilized a force to break the siege.
Ukraine can only do infrequent drone raids. In order to properly siege Moscow, they would need to lock down all ways in and out of the city, and keep it that way for months, possibly longer given modern food preservation techniques and the viability of backyard farming. Additionally, sieging a city no longer prevents the people from communicating with the outside world, meaning other Russian forces would respond in days.
I suppose there’s also little reason to siege cities nowadays, given that city walls for defense are no longer a thing.
The most successful besiegers were probably the Romans. It wasn’t so much the act of laying siege that caused cities to surrender, it was the utter, uncompromising determination of the Romans to see the siege through to the end, and the atrocities they would commit on the surrendering population that made them so successful. Surrender immediately and you don’t get enslaved or butchered… hold out and things will go very, very badly.
I don’t recall all the details but there was one siege in western Europe where the mayor of the town declared ‘you won’t take us: we have supplies for four years in our store houses’ to which the Roman commander replied ‘then we’ll take you on the fifth year.’
Or take Masada, a supposedly impregnable fortress built on a mountaintop. First the Romans built walls all the way around it, both to contain the Jewish ‘rebels’ but also to protect the Roman siegeworks from any potential rescue force. Then they just built a ramp. A massive, massive ramp, that reached all the way up to the fortress walls (which weren’t that strong because who builds a strong wall when your fortress is perched on top of a mountain?). Then they wheeled up some siege engines, smashed their way through the walls and discovered most of the inhabitants had commited suicide rather than face capture.
Yeah exactly. Sieges don’t work except when they do.