I’m not sure that Russia was specifically targeting civilians. Now could they have missed the intended tgt and accidentally hit a civilian target? Sure. Could an error have been made during fog of war type conditions? You bet. I have seen that shit happen multitudes of times. And it is very likely that Russia does not have a robust ISR capability to support CA to the same scale as we do.
It’s consistent with Russian employment of weapons throughout their history though. Civilians are not only targeted, but raped, robbed, tortured, and displaced if they survive. Then ethnic Russians are moved in to occupy those areas.
My family suffered multiple losses like this in the 1940s. I was just reading through war archives of my great uncles who died in Talvisota, and my daughter-in-law’s grandfather’s and great grandfather’s records when they were forced from their homes in Ingria by the communists.
The big mistake Westerners make, especially in the US, is thinking that Russians have a mentality centered in the modern world, as if their history doesn’t exist. Russians have a very long memory ingrained into them about territorial conquest, having to fight all the people they stole land from over the past 1000 years.
They always have to be on the offense, otherwise they get really uneasy about the future. There are 3 significant times in Russian history where they endured chaos, the worst being under the Mongols. They will support a Tsar who attacks their neighbors with their resources, rather than building up Russian infrastructure and not think twice about it. They are happy to suffer because suffering comes with Russian land, winter, muddy summer, and drunken benders to escape from it all.
It’s a very sick and toxic society that never has gotten along with its neighbors, and does mental gymnastics to evade any moral responsibility for its crimes against others. “If you put your arm down, I won’t have to keep hitting you!"
