If the Russians thought they could roll into Ukraine and Ukraine would roll over, they now know they were wrong. But in the long view, Vladimir Putin made it cold-bloodedly clear yesterday that he’s not going back. His planes had the terrifying temerity to attack Ukraine’s (and Europe’s) largest nuclear power plant; maybe luck alone kept the immoral bombardment from becoming a Europe-wide nuclear holocaust. And the Kremlin chillingly reported that in a long talk on the telephone, Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that Russia’s goals— “the demilitarization and neutral status of Ukraine”— “will be achieved no matter what.” The French version of the ultimatum was that Putin told Macron, “He is prepared to go all the way.”
If the blood coursing through Putin runs that cold, and his tanks keep moving on Ukraine’s cities, he still might win what he wants. But not without one thing it seems he didn’t plan for: urban warfare, guerrilla warfare, and from what I’ve seen over the years— from Beirut to Belfast, Afghanistan to Iran— that can bloody the attackers trying to take and hold a city as much as it can bloody its defenders.
So occupying a hostile nation might be Putin’s goal, but it also might be his guillotine.
His soldiers’ conundrum is, they are taking the fight to someone else’s neighborhood. Think of it this way: if you want to beat me up but have to chase me into my own neighborhood to do it, who has the advantage? I know the streets, I know the alleyways, I have the friends, I have the safe houses. And if you come from Russia but you’re chasing me in Ukraine, anyone you encounter speaks my language, not yours.
What’s more, while I’m hiding, you’re exposed to ambush because it’s my urban jungle and you have no place to hide. On Twitter last weekend, the chairman of urban warfare studies with the Modern War Institute at West Point, retired Major John Spencer, put it plainly: “The urban defense is hell for any soldier.”
That’s what I’ve seen. And what Russia might see soon.
Some of the wars I covered had outsiders attacking insiders while others were internal affairs— one local faction fighting another— but the principle is the same: once you leave the open battlefield and move into urban centers, you’re dealing with a whole new set of threats. Snipers, hit-and-run ambushes, booby-traps, and maybe most potent, people who will put their lives on the line to protect their homes because the fight has come to them.
In Belfast during “The Troubles,” I watched British troops move through Catholic neighborhoods in which they were deeply despised. Squads on foot had to put one soldier, rifle ready, on forward point, two in the middle with rifles trained on both sides of the street, and a fourth stepping backwards, guarding the rear. When they did vehicle patrols, they were in heavily armored cages-on-wheels, thick steel chains and bars and half-inch plates covering every inch to protect against snipers and bombs hitting them from the outside. Their barracks, plain and simply, were fortresses, right in the heart of a hostile population. And maybe toughest of all for those troops was this: the combatants looked like civilians because that’s what they were, one and the same.
That is one kind of hell that Russian soldiers will likely face.
In Beirut during Lebanon’s long and destructive civil war, it was snipers and bombs. In what was known as the “Green Zone,” which separated the Christian side of the city from the Moslem side, anyone trying to cross the city, including us, had to run in zig-zag patterns to dodge the snipers’ bullets. And when one side wanted to send bloody messages to the other, car bombs went off, timed to kill the enemy when the bombers knew the enemy was close.
That is another kind of hell the Ukrainian resistance might have in store for Russian troops.
Probably the most egregious and explosive example that I saw of the hell of urban warfare was during the revolution in Iran. As tanks from the Shah’s loyal Imperial Guard rolled down Tehran’s boulevards to crush rebels on the ground, I saw other rebels in buildings overhead drop Molotov cocktails— the same crude gas-filled fireballs the Ukrainian resistance has been assembling— onto the Shah’s armored vehicles and when one would hit its mark, the tank and the soldiers inside were incinerated.
If that won’t be hell for Russian troops, nothing will be.
And Afghanistan? Once, early in the Soviet invasion there, my camera crew and I were beset in Kabul and began to be beaten by a mob, and only survived because someone in the crowd understood when we screamed for them to stop that we were screaming in English, not Russian. The man who saved us explained that they thought we either were a Soviet media team, or plainclothes Soviet officers. Either way, they were taking out their rage on us and only quit when they learned that we weren’t the enemy.
The Russians might occupy cities in Ukraine, but they won’t be safe.
As former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who once commanded infantry units himself, put it on CNN, “You can consume a lot of troops very easily in just a small area.” West Point’s tactical expert, Major Spencer, points out that in urban warfare, “It usually takes five attackers to one defender.” Those odds are not in the Russians’ favor.
In Esper’s opinion, “If the Ukrainian people are going to fight, they may get into Kyiv, they won’t be able to hold it, and frankly they may never get out.”
Spencer’s advice to Ukraine’s defenders to make that come true is, “Go out and build obstacles in the streets. Start with any bridge you can find. Block them with cars, trucks, concrete, wood, trash, anything. Turn Kyiv and any urban area leading to Kyiv into a porcupine.”
Porcupine’s can’t kill you, but in urban warfare, they can make you sorry you came.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Brings to mind the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it." If Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine, it may well turn out to be an albatross for him. Nice meeting you today at the competition. My daughter finished upright and in one piece. Woo hoo. Now I can relax.
Hopefully there will be Russians who read this article. There already appears to be considerable ambivalence among many of the Russian troops as they contemplate what to do when facing the resistance the Ukranians are providing. Unfortunately,Putin is not there to join his troops, he rests in his cowardice, like most bullies, in a warm place in Moscow.
Dave Dillingham