“ Maybe the plan all along was to move slowly and cautiously to avoid civilian casualties”
For the first several days, Russian forces scrupulously avoided civilian targets. By the end of the first week they had begun systematically striking civilian areas of Kharkiv with barrages of Grad rockets (area effect weapons), as well as the first use of TOS-1 thermobaric rocket barrages against civilian neighborhoods.
The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure like water, heat, electricity, hospitals and communications has steadily increased. It is now the main effort of Russian forces in the Ukraine, producing the biggest refugee movement in Europe since WWII. This same approach of targeting civilians has characterized every Russian conflict that has occurred under Putin’s reign - Chechnya, Syria, Georgia (somewhat less so in the less urban parts of Georgia that Russia seized there, but perhaps because they were just more difficult to target, being more spread out).
It is no accident. It is Putin’s way of making war, it was the Russian way of war before Putin took over. They are treating Ukrainian cities the same as they treated Grozny, Aleppo and Homs.
What do you know about Russians? They are civilized human beings, the same as us. They are not the monsters you are being led to believe. They are intentional diminishing Putin and the Russian people in an effort to make you want to kill them. In other words, they are prepping the battlefield. It will be a catastrophe if we go to war with Russia. After all the deception we have been through, please don’t fall for it.
The Russians are now claiming that the shopping center they demolished (with eight dead!) using a hypersonic missile had been in use as a depot or storage facility for armaments.
How dare the Ukrainians store weapons on their own territory! The nerve of those people!
So, of course, Russia had the right to destroy it!
/ mordant sarcasm
Regards,