John Spencer and Jayson Geroux of the Modern War Institute present an overview of defensive tactics from the modern history of urban warfare. Defenders can, for instance, create strongpoints by reinforcing buildings or using preexisting structures that are already hard to destroy:
In September 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, Russian Sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his platoon seized a four-story apartment building — later dubbed “Pavlov’s House” — overlooking a large square. The building had long lines of sight from three sides. Pavlov’s men place barbed wire and antipersonnel and antitank mines around the building, smashed and cut holes in walls to create interior walkways, and placed machine-gun firing points in the building’s corners. They would move to the cellar as indirect fire struck the top of the building or to higher floors when German Panzers approached so they could fire antitank rifles down onto the tanks’ vulnerable, thin roofs. Pavlov and his men held the building for fifty-eight days against numerous mechanized and combined arms attacks, causing an unknown number of German vehicle and soldier kills in the process.
Urban defenders can shape the terrain by rubbling buildings:
From September to December 1943 Wehrmacht engineers in Ortona, Italy extensively rubbled the buildings to support the German defense of the city. They blew down corners of houses, entire houses, or even lines of houses to create rubble piles up to fifteen feet high, which were then liberally sown with mines and booby traps. This rubble blocked narrower, ox cart–width secondary streets to force the attacking Canadians down the main thoroughfare and into the main German defensive area. It also made it nearly impossible for supporting tanks to climb over the piles or maneuver to support the dismounted infantry and engineers, and even blocked Canadian observation down the roads.
Modern cities often have existing concrete barriers:
ISIS fighters used concrete barriers such as T-walls left behind by coalition forces for their defense of the city of Mosul, Iraq in late 2016 and 2017. They used trucks and cranes to move and then pile the barriers on the outskirts of the city. The obstacle numbers and composition required the coalition to take ten-week training courses on combined arms breaching and then use an extensive amount of armored vehicles that included sixty up-armored bulldozers to breach the barriers themselves.
Large weapons can be disassembled and reassembled on the higher floor of a building to provide superior lines of sight and angles of fire:
At the Battle of Manila, Philippines in 1945, Japanese naval defense forces removed antiaircraft and naval guns from their destroyed ships in Manila Bay and put them in pillboxes and strongpoints across the city. At the Battle of Ortona, the German defenders disassembled two antitank guns and reassembled them on the second floors of two buildings in Piazza Plebiscito, allowing them to destroy two Sherman tanks when they entered the square. It took several hours for the Canadians to bring in more resources to eventually destroy these two antitank gun positions.
Urban defenders must now develop creative ways to hide obstacles, weapon systems, battle positions, and personnel from aerial observation:
Civilians in Aleppo, Syria strung forty-foot-high sheets between buildings to reduce sniper attacks while ISIS, as part of its defensive plan in 2017, also placed cloth, metal, or tarpaulins between buildings in Raqqa, Syria to stymie coalition aerial assets. These simple camouflage techniques are the urban operations equivalent of attaching trees and foliage to vehicles in wooded terrain.
Mouseholes — holes created in interior and exterior walls of buildings — allow soldiers to move while remaining hidden:
ISIS fighters in the 2017 Battle of Marawi in the Philippines used mouseholes and tunnels under and through houses to enable movement to and from battle positions and to move to alternate position if they were at risk of being overrun. The mouseholes and tunnels also allowed militants to escape massive aerial bombardments and maneuver against Philippine military forces, ultimately contributing to the amount of collateral damage required to retake the city. During the 1945 the Battle of Berlin, German soldiers proved adept at using the city’s extensive underground transportation, sewage, and other infrastructure networks. The tunnels were used to care for wounded, maintain lines of communication, shelter noncombatants, and conduct attacks. One Soviet commander, Marshal Ivan S. Koniev, recalled that the German forces’ “use of the underground structures caused a good deal of trouble….[German soldiers] emerg[ed] from the underground communications [and] fired on motor vehicles, tanks, and gun crews.”
The defense allows a force to pre-position ammunition, medical supplies, water, and rations:
The Germans at the Battle of Ortona had neatly stacked rifle magazines resting on windowsills, along with boxes of grenades and piles of antitank mines in pre-selected rooms, thus allowing them to be unconcerned about the burden of carrying all their required supplies with them as they fought and moved between positions. Japanese naval defense forces preparing for the attack of the US 6th Army at the Battle of Manila put caches in sewers to support their extensive network of battle positions.
The urban environment offers a multitude of large obstacles:
During a significant battle in Sadr City, Iraq on April 4, 2004, Mahdi militiamen and their sympathizers rapidly constructed hasty obstacles made of refrigerators, vehicle engine blocks and axles, rolls of concertina wire, wooden furniture, heaps of burning trash, and rotting meat that stopped American HMMWVs, infantry fighting vehicles, and at times even M1 Abrams tanks. At the 1950 Battle of Seoul, North Koreans made barricades of sandbags, vehicles, debris, and anything else they could get their hands on. The barricades were used to block roads, protect strongpoints, and establish an overall barricade defense system with some obstacles so strong it took UN forces days to clear them.
Antiarmor ambushes have had tremendous success in urban terrain:
During the 1994–95 First Battle of Grozny, Chechnya, Chechen separatists perfected the use of antiarmor ambushes against Russian conventional forces attempting to seize the city. The rebels used small, nonstandard squads with as few as two men as mobile antitank teams. These elements, armed with only AK-47s, grenades, and RPG-7s or RPG-18s, engaged Russian armored vehicles from either basements or upper stories of buildings, where main tanks and other weapons could not effectively return fire. Once in their trap, ambush teams would strike the vulnerable points of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers, hit the lead and trail vehicles, quickly withdraw, and then move up the flanks to strike the now paralyzed Russian columns again. Between January 1 and January 3, 1995, the Russian 131st Motorized Rifle Brigade lost 102 of 120 armored vehicles and twenty of twenty-six tanks due to these and other methods. Out of the thirty-one T-80BV tanks sent into Grozny with the 3rd Tank Battalion, 6th Tank Regiment, only one tank survived the battle fully operational.
Snipers are a force multiplier while conducting a defense:
The Battle of Stalingrad epitomizes the use of snipers in urban warfare. While the Russians were on the defensive in Stalingrad in 1942, their snipers proved devastating to German forces. Snipers during the battle became national heroes, tallying hundreds of kills. Famous Soviet snipers, like Vasily Ivanovich Zaitsev, mastered the urban terrain and developed new tactics such as using pipes or old barrels as hide sites and making unimaginable shots. The effectiveness of the snipers had a devastating real and physiological impact on the Germans.
All very true. Still, the underlying assumption is that the attackers want to go mano-a-mano with the defenders. Modern warfare, such as NATO used when it invaded Serbia, can cut off electric power, water, communications — a more effective form of the ancient tactic of besieging a city until the residents starved and surrendered.
Russia in the Ukraine seems to have generally eschewed NATO tactics, presumably to minimize casualties among civilians with whom Russia has no argument.
If Russia’s aim is to “de-nazify” the Ukraine rather than to occupy it, which is what Russia has repeatedly said, then seizing control of entire cities would seem to be an unnecessary tactic.
All of the above is correct.
Which is why since Sun Tzu it has been advisable not to go into cities. Cities have always been vulnerable to hunger and thirst, and now can be levelled with artillery, rockets, and air from a distance. Storming a city or fortress has been a choice and usually not the first choice since ancient times.
The Russians aren’t going into the cities. They probe and when they meet resistance fire off some artillery but are mostly maneuvering around and using siege and starve the cities [plus bombardment] and it worked in Syria, they are doing it now in Ukraine.
Had we taken this approach in Iraq instead of trying to make them into Swedes we would have had a much shorter war and markedly more success. When we did it against ISIS at the end – Mosul for example – it worked fine.
The Russians are in no hurry and are proceeding methodically with an eye towards minimal destruction, the destruction they most seek to minimize is their own soldiers of course, so firepower will be used not even to lay waste but to coerce surrender.
It does remain absolutely true that if infantry or tanks go into a city the casualties are much higher.
Sun Tzu…so nothing new here except some new tools.
The relevant parts of Sun tzu’s known writings are
“If troops lay siege to a walled city, their strength will be exhausted.”
“Therefore, the best warfare strategy is to attack the enemy’s plans, next is to attack alliances, next is to attack the army, and the worst is to attack a walled city.”
“Laying siege to a city is only done when other options are not available.”
“If the general cannot control his temper and sends troops to swarm the walls, one third of them will be killed, and the city will still not be taken.”
“This is the kind of calamity when laying siege to a walled city.”
“Therefore, one who is skilled in warfare principles subdues the enemy without doing battle, takes the enemy’s walled city without attacking, and overthrows the enemy quickly, without protracted warfare.”
“Generally, the principles of warfare are:
…
there are walled cities not to be besieged; “
All well and good. But in the end defenders lost. All the tactics described serve to slow down the progress of the attacker; that’s all. Russia will just keep sending in soldiers, keep bombing, keep killing (civilians or otherwise), encircle cities and literally starve the inhabitants/defenders, etc. Russians have never, ever cared about the quantity of dead, either Russian or not.