Since the end of the Cold War, all the wars of aggression we have seen have been fought by the United States alone. So, basically what you see in modern warfare is bombers washing the floor, and then infantry to the battlefield to harvest. After indiscriminate bombing, all heavy weapons in countries such as the Middle East were exhausted, and the resistance that the NATO Army could encounter was low intensity.
But such an approach has a very big drawback, that is, after the end of the war, there will be very strong resistance. For example, countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to deplete the combat strength of the US military for a long time and with low intensity, and eventually there will be such a scene as the withdrawal of Afghan troops. And this Russian-Ukrainian conflict is certainly not such a model, this conflict is more like the Syrian model.
First, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is more like the Syrian model
In fact, the Russian-Ukrainian war is very similar to the Syrian battlefield. At that time, the main task of the Russian army invited by Assad to Syria was to help Assad gain control of various cities. If the ground is directly washed with large-scale shells like the US military, it will have no meaning for the Bashar regime.
As the legitimate government of Syria, the Assad regime needs to be rebuilt after the war, and the second is to stabilize the hearts and minds of the people in Syria. Therefore, unnecessary civilian casualties should be minimized during the course of combat. Especially in a large agricultural province like Idlib, the population is very dense, basically a bullet can scratch several people.
In such a place, only through the ground forces to cooperate with the Russian Air and Space Force, step by step to compress the rebel front, and finally annihilate the rebels to end the battle. Moreover, the Russian army is very good at using the strategy of encircling three and one. The advantage of this strategy is that once the opponent is unable to break through further under strong pressure, it will flee in the direction where the Russian army is not encircled. The Battle of Idlib was such a way of playing.
Throughout the Battle of Idlib, the Russian-Syrian coalition eliminated almost 20,000 rebels, basically ending the Syrian civil war. In August 2019, there were as many as 60,000 rebels in the entire Syrian province of Idlib, mainly HTS. But by the end of the Battle of Idlib, the number of rebels had dropped to more than 20,000. During this period, Turkey also transferred more than 5,000 people to the Libyan battlefield. As many as 20,000-30,000 people were wiped out by the Russian-Syrian coalition.
Second, the early stage of the Syrian battlefield was not smooth
The Russian-Syrian coalition army was not very smooth in the early days of the Battle of Idlib, and even suffered relatively serious equipment losses in Latakia and other places. This is similar to the current War in Ukraine, because there are significant differences in military strength between the two sides, and when these war potentials are exhausted, the war will basically fall into a one-sided state.
Taking the Ukrainian battlefield as an example, we can often see the Ukrainian army taking videos and shooting down one or two tanks of the Russian army. But this is often not the case in the entire battlefield. The whole battle process was that the Ukrainian army used javelin anti-tank missiles to injure a Russian tank, and then the follow-up anti-tank team immediately cleared the nearby anti-tank troops under the cover of tanks.
Moreover, when the armored forces enter a new area, the Corresponding Area will first be cleared in a large area by drones and special forces. Whether it is ukrainian troops in Ukraine or rebels in Syria, they will be hit hard before and after attacks on Russian forces or Russian-Syrian coalition forces. This is also why in the Syrian battlefield, the Russian-Syrian coalition forces can advance rapidly after January 16, 2020.
At that time, the Syrian army advanced along the M5 Highway at a speed of three kilometers per day towards Idlib City and Satellite City. In order to cooperate with this main force, the Russian-Syrian coalition army also opened up a battlefield in the east, and the two roads jointly attacked the central area of Idlib. According to foreign media descriptions, the fortifications built in Idlib province are a hedgehog-like structure. The external fortifications are relatively hard, and the internal fortifications are softer. This also has something to do with the dense population of idlib centres. Therefore, after the early stage of the battle to pull up the stronghold, the speed of advancement also began to accelerate.
In fact, this is the same as several large cities in Ukraine today. It looked like the Russians were besieging several cities on the border, but in reality the interior was empty. The Russian forces on the southern and northern fronts could intersperse back and forth along the Dnieper River, as if entering no man's land, because these areas did not have a very large force deployment. Several mobile units on the southern front had been wiped out by the 58th Army, which was attacking in the direction of Crimea, early in the war.
Russian 58th Army
By late January 2020, Kafa Nabdah, Hanshekh and Marat Numan on the outskirts of Idlib were lost, and Idlib was completely exposed to the Russian-Syrian coalition. In particular, Hanshehong is very important, and the city is an important town along the M5 highway. Once occupied, Syrian mechanized troops and logistic convoys could reach the city of Idlib.
When the Syrian army attacked the above towns, it followed the advice of the Russian advisers and adopted the "grinding disc tactic". Because these locations were so important, the rebels organized several counter-charges to retake them. The Syrian army will retreat to a certain extent, and then wait until the rebels enter the relevant strongholds and bombard them with artillery and air superiority when they are unstable. Kaffa-Nabdah is a typical example, after many tug-of-war, the rebel HTS elite special forces and a large number of mercenaries were annihilated by the Syrian army.
It was precisely because the rebels had consumed a large number of reserves and elite forces in many conflicts that the Syrian army did not encounter strong resistance in the ensuing battle of Salazib. Of course, Idlib was the last stronghold of the rebels and was also close to Turkey. Finally, it entered the diplomatic link, and it had little to do with the military.
The outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict may also be similar to the Syrian war. As the battle slowly entered the second half of the battle, the Russian army captured the cities of Mariupol, Samui, Nikolayev and other cities little by little, and which cities would eventually be captured would undergo a series of changes according to the negotiation process.
It can be said that the Syrian siege is the model of the current Ukrainian battlefield, whether it is modern warfare or the Cold War, without the use of carpet bombing, siege warfare will not be as simple as imagined, unless you, like the United States, do not want to occupy at all, only responsible for destroying and controlling the high ground of international public opinion.
Author/Lonely Cold Light
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