WAR IN UKRAINEMight Russia Turn to Terror Bombing Civilians in Ukraine?

By Karl P. Mueller

Recent Russian missile attacks against civilian targets in cities far away from the front lines have killed scores of Ukrainians, leading to widespread outrage. These events raise the question of whether the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase in which terror attacks might become common.

Russia insists that it strikes only at military targets. This may generally be their intent—if one defines military targets broadly to include urban areas in the Donbas or other areas where Ukrainian forces resisting the Russian invasion are suspected to be, or might be at some point in the future. Missiles have struck civilian buildings elsewhere across Ukraine, but it is often difficult to distinguish deliberate attacks from those that were aimed at civilian targets because of faulty intelligence, or those that missed intended military targets because the weapons were inaccurate or were fired with little regard for where they landed. This problem is growing more severe as Russia runs low on newer, more-accurate missiles and draws on its stockpiles of older munitions.

Even if Russia were only aiming at military targets this would not make its actions legal. The laws of war not only prohibit deliberately attacking civilians, they also proscribe attacks against military targets that can be expected to cause harm to noncombatants out of proportion to the military value of the action—the classic classroom example is that you are not allowed to destroy a crowded apartment building in order to kill a sniper on the roof. Thus lobbing salvos of unguided rockets indiscriminately into urban areas from long range, or launching obsolescent anti-ship missiles at cities when the weapons’ radar might or might not lock on to something of military value instead of a hospital or a university building, is not accepted by international law, even if the nominal target would otherwise be legal to attack.