Thread by @StasOlenchenko

Why is Russia trying to murder Ukraine’s towns?

Seeing the fate of Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Maryinka and other towns makes you wonder: why would anyone kill a city? Isn’t occupation enough for Moscow?

The answer also holds the key to understanding Russia's logic of this war.

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Killing a city is a lot of work that leaves you with an absurd result: a blank space on the map. Nothing in place of something.

So much discipline, intention and overtime work just to bleach a limited land area. This begs the question: Why?

Slavenka Drakulić had the answer.
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The Croatian journalist had a similar question when she wrote about Old Bridge (Stari Most), a 436-year-old bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was destroyed by artillery of the Croatian Army in 1993.

Her quote:
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“The question is: What kind of people do not need that bridge? The only answer I can come up with is this: people who do not believe in the future –theirs or their children's – do not need such a bridge.”

I think this is profoundly true.
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Wiping out a town makes sense only if you don’t need it – and don’t believe this place and its people deserve a future.

Cities are the drivers of progress, they embody society’s hope for prosperity and growth.

City-killing is essentially a modern method of genocide.
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So why didn’t Russia murder all the Ukrainian towns it reached?

Mariupol, a 400,000-strong port hub in Donbas, faced a different fate.

After two months of heavy bombardment and brutal siege in 2022, Mariupol – or what was left of it – fell into the hands of the Russians.
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Little is known about the level of destruction the city experienced, as Russia has shut the city from international observers.

We can only learn from the survivors’ stories, the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol documentary movie, and the satellite images of mass graves.
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For better or worse, the city of Mariupol was intentionally brought back from the dead. Russia turned the city into its main achievement, a Potemkin village of the modern “Russian World.”

Mariupol of 2024 is quite literally a zombie city.
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After getting bombed into inexistence in 2022, Mariupol is now being rebuilt and repopulated by the incoming Russian settlers attracted by juicy housing deals.

It’s a stuffed corpse paraded as a trophy.
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If Mariupol stays in Russia’s hands for another decade, it will become an entirely different place.

The city will stay alive, though, as a creepy reminder of the various shapes of evil.

Most of Ukraine’s towns that fall into the Russian hands face a different fate.
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Total annihilation is followed by silence. Newly captured towns become military bases for future offensives. No life is planned here.

Bakhmut, Lysychansk, Popasna, Maryinka and many other towns will likely disappear – staying alive only in war stories and military studies.
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This selective urbicide is not accidental. It’s designed this way.

Russia’s actions are full of intention and discipline: the city-killing is part of a wider plan to destroy the Ukrainian nation and statehood.
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By Russia’s logic, every Ukrainian town that refuses to be swallowed into the "Russian World" deserves to vanish.

Places that carry value in Russia’s imperial myth-building are “lucky” to be zombified like Mariupol.

Everyone else can either join Russia voluntarily or die.
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Destroying the hope for a free, independent, prosperous Ukraine is the main intention of Russia’s urbicide campaign in Ukraine.

As long as Russia can continue waging this war, it will seek to kill Ukraine, one town at a time.
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This thread is a fragment of my recent essay, The Annihilation of a City. You can read it here:

Subscribe for more in-depth reflections like this one.open.substack.com/pub/stasolench…