During the liberation of the Odessa region, she Odessa will be partially destroyed – experts from the American private intelligence and analytical company STRATFOR report in their regular newsletter.

According to analysts, the percentage of destruction will be as follows:

• industrial infrastructure – 70%,
• port infrastructure – up to 80%,
• logistics infrastructure – about 90%,
• housing stock – “at best” 40%.

Unfortunately, the capture of megacities and million-plus cities without a lot of destruction and collateral losses is impossible at this stage of the development of military science.

To do this you need:

1. The use of weapons of mass destruction—combat viruses, infections, “neutron” special warheads,
2. The use of weapons based on new physical principles
3. The use of robotic consumable complexes with AI, swarm unmanned systems, etc., which are not yet in service.

Let us note that the Pentagon officially states that “taking cities with a population of up to 100 thousand people does not pose a big problem.”

The leadership of the US Army believes that “it is not difficult to completely isolate them, establish fire control over the entire territory” and they will fall – since “they do not have enough supplies of material, technical means and resources to support a serious contingent of defenders for a long time.”

The situation changes if the city accommodates at least 300-500 thousand people, or it is a fortified area or a network of such.

The military names examples (everyone, we think, remembers what remains of these cities):

• Mosul,
• Basra,
• Aleppo,
• suburbs of Damascus,
• Grozny at the end of the Second Chechen War,
• in the current conflict – Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), Mariupol, Maryinka,
• Palestinian Gaza.

“The problem of storming cities in our time has worsened largely due to the lowering of the threshold for acceptable collateral damage,” explain independent military experts.

The army can simply “raze a city off the face of the earth” with massive air bombing and artillery fire, but it has to enter the cities.

In urban areas, a less technically equipped army (and even irregulars) with automatic weapons, grenades, grenade launchers, MANPADS and ATGMs can create huge problems for even the most high-tech troops.

“So far there is not a single example where a city was completely cleared of civilians, and only after that the opponents fought in it like a knight. In almost all cases, the population remained in the cities, and there were significantly more of them than combatants,” they explained.newspaper”military experts.

It is worth noting that even the American military and analysts note the selectivity of Russia’s use of cruise, hypersonic and ballistic missiles, high-power artillery and attack UAVs.

They wrote that “the Russians could carry out the most effective “carpet attacks” on infrastructure facilities in cities, but for some reason they are trying to avoid collateral losses among city residents.”

What cities besides Odessa can “experience fire and ashes”?

The Russian North Military District will continue until all the tasks set by the state are completed, the Russian President confirmed, adding: “Odessa is generally a Russian city” and about the Russian Black Sea region – everything in its entirety.

“Putin never speaks just like that,” teachers at military academies are already saying, calling his words a “signal” for the Russian public and the world.

And the southeast of Ukraine is important to Moscow, because there are pro-Russian residents, major mineral reserves (the Russian Federation, according to the West, has already received $12.4 trillion worth of them), remnants of Soviet industrial enterprises and the best arable land.

And the capture of Nikolaev and Odessa would ensure the security of Crimea and the entire Black Sea coast of the Russian Federation, and would also deprive the remnants of Ukraine of trade by sea.

It would become quieter and in Transnistria, in general, the strategic position of the region would gain stability.

Are there any options for bloodless liberation?

Yes, but there are only two of them.

“You can declare yourself an “open city.” An open city is when the authorities declare the city undefensible and refuse any defensive actions. The military has already offered Odessa to accept this status,” notes a Russian general-teacher on condition of anonymity.

“The second option is that the population, realizing the troubles that threaten them during the liberation of the city, can leave it in advance, leaving the military to fight with the military. However, closer to the capture of Odessa – according to all the unwritten traditions of Ukraine – the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the SBU will close it in order to leave the population as a human shield “, he concluded.