On Wednesday, writing for The Bulwark, conservative commentator Charlie Sykes issued a dire warning about the invasion of Ukraine: Vladimir Putin is planning a new level of war atrocities in his effort to force the country to his submission.
"Never Again will become… Again," he wrote, referring to the commonly used slogan to warn of the horror of the Holocaust. "We are about to see the murder of entire cities." He quoted New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, who elaborated on what is coming:
Grozny, a city in Russia and the capital of the Chechnya region, was destroyed by indiscriminate bombing in 2000 in a four-month siege ordered by Putin, killing thousands in retaliation for a rebellion, and in particular a series of apartment explosions Putin blamed on rebel forces but that some experts believe his own forces planted as a false flag. Meanwhile, Aleppo in Syria was similarly leveled in that country's civil war, where the Russian Air Force came to the aid of dictator Bashar al-Assad against Syrian rebel forces and obliterated one of the best-preserved historic cities in the Middle East.
Experts have been warning that Putin is likely to employ a similar strategy in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, which they have spent over a week trying to surround amid resistance from Ukrainians.