Wars that resemble raindrops. One of the first bombardments that began the siege of Grozny during the second chechen war the occurred October 21, 1999. Several ballistic missiles hit “a market, a mosque and the only gynecological hospital in operation in the city,” he reminds EL PERIÓDICO Usman Baisayevformer human rights NGO activist Memorialrecently banned by the Russian justice system, which at the time was documenting the atrocities of the russian troops in the contest. Between 20 and 25 people died in the health Centerwhile in total, the coordinated attack resulted in more than a hundred dead. More than two decades later, in Ukraine, a war outside the borders of the Russian Federationa pediatric hospital in Mariupol, a town resisting siege by Russian forces, suffered another deliberate attack resulting in three dead.
Thanks to his experience, Baisáyev is clear that this fierceness of the Russian troops against civilians it’s a luck of collective punishment to the Ukrainian soldiers: “They are not just defending the city, they are the protectors of the local population; by shelling targets such as hospitals, the attackers send the message that if the Ukrainians put up resistance, it will be the population who will pay the consequences”.
Martha Tera Catalan who was then in charge of the campaign”Txetxtènia, trenquem the silence”recalls with regret an episode in Alkhan-Kala starring doctor Khassan Bayev. “They were bombing near her hospital, and to identify the place, she hung a banner with a red cross on the ceiling; it was placed and the building became a constant target of deliberate attacks,” the former activist denounces.
Strategies that look like traces
No wonder military strategies look like carbon copies. Leading the Russian operation in Ukraine are Valery GerasimovChief of the Army General Staff, and his number two, also General Nikolai Bogdanovskitwo military commanders considered by Memorial as “war criminals”, reveals Baisayev. The first, according to ex-Memorial activist“is responsible for crimes committed during armed clashes in March 2000 in the town of goi chu, about 20 kilometers south of Grozny. The second “is guilty of the death of civilians during massive cleaning operations(in Russian zachistka) during the years 2001 and 2002“, continues the researcher.
Sergio Maydeu-Olivaresan associate researcher at CIDOB who closely followed the siege of Aleppo neighborhoods under rebel control during the Syrian civil war, maintains that the attacks on civilian infrastructure remind him of “at the first momentsof said fence. Leila Nachawati Regoa professor of Spanish-Syrian Communication and an expert on the Middle East, maintains that during that conflict, the Kremlin carried out a kind of “essay about impunity” and the tolerance of the West in the face of atrocities committed by its troops. For this reason, in Ukraine everything goes “faster” and episodes that took ttime to appear the Arab country have already been seen in Ukraine.
If you have to stick to past experiences, the worst is yet to come. When the Russian intervention in Syria began in 2015, the atrocities experienced a substantial escalationaccording to a complaint to this newspaper Abdulrahman El Khasan, spokesperson for the White Helmets, who removed the dead and wounded after the bombings. “Bombs were used much biggerfrom 400 kilos; also use anti-bunker weapons, which unraveled the underground shelters “, he denounces.
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One of the new tactics that came with the Russians was to double tap or controlled torque: “They bombed on the first occasion and after five or 10 minuteswhen the ambulances were on the ground, they opened fire again“.