The details of recorded conversations from the German secret services between Russian soldiers in Ukrainerevealed the other day by the magazine the spiegelwith horrors at the expense of the civilian population in the city of Butsa are not surprised, because Russia did the same in Syria. This is the conclusion reached by Fabrice Balance, Professor of Political Geography at the French University of Lyon 2 and a member of the Middle East Institute based in Washington.
“Putin focuses on cities first”
In an interview he gave to Deutsche Welle The French professor states that between 2011 and 2015, when Russian army was not present in Syria, o President Putin developed a strong diplomatic presence. He tried the reaction of the West, he used propaganda, he lied about the use of chemicals, as he does in Ukraine, in short he tried to put the West to sleep. “Then in 2015 the Russian army entered Syria and we saw a strategy by Vladimir Putin quite similar to that in Ukraine. That is, first focus on the cities. He “cleansed” them from the armed forces only to show his power, to make them capitulate in other areas, around the cities and in neuralgic centers. “Because there are the centers of organization and logistics, there the wealth is concentrated, there are the communication hubs. And so in Ukraine we immediately saw that the Russians attacked Kyiv, Kharkov, Mariupol, soon Odessa.”
Professor Balance also refers to a terror campaign in Syria, separating the militants from the civilian population. The militants hid among the population and with indiscriminate bombardments, they made the civilians flee. Those who remained were considered guerrillas and began to disappear immediately. That is, as Balance points out, Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is to separate as many people as possible from the Ukrainian army in order to defeat him more easily.
“He wants to empty Ukraine of the population”
“In Ukraine, we already have more than 4 million people who have left. Putin wants to empty Ukraine of its living potential. I think it can manage to leave up to 10 million, ie ¼ of its population, especially young people and families. This means that the men fighting on the front will be separated from his families. Psychologically it is very difficult and this may limit their ability to resist. “But that is the goal of the Russians, to occupy territories by eliminating the population.” The Russians, despite the evidence, both in the case of Butsa and in Krematorsk, deny the attacks on civilians, they consider that they are not bound by international treaties. Why is this happening?
“Russia is lying, it did the same in Syria, when the evidence was unshakable about the chemical attacks,” said the French professor. “Goebbels used to say that the more you lie, the bigger it gets, the more it goes. “Putin and the Russians are adopting the same type of propaganda that we saw even during the Soviet era.”
DW / Sandrine Blanchard / Editor: Irini Anastassopoulou
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