The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.