Funny how you left this part out...
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
(a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
Especially given your laughable attempt to consider an entire city a single military objective given it's directly stated you aren't allowed to do that.
Which is overruled by section 7. Once a war starts and a city is made a fortress, the protections are forfeited unless all military installations are shut down, armed forces leave, and the city declared open. If not done, the city itself is a legitimate target as military units have made it one.
And how did Russia's one attempt at a column work out for them? Oh right... It was blasted and forced to break up showing why Column's aren't actually a thing anymore...
It honestly just amazes me that you think Russia still has any chance at winning this given taking a single city of less then five hundred thousand has taken them a month and bled them most of their modern equipment and over ten percent of their military...
You do realize there are multiple Russian Columns, the bulk of them getting through without problems and very few actual losses in the columns that are hit.
And it amazes me that you still think its easy to take a well defended city given the US Military spent longer to take Fallujah from 4,000 insurgents in 2004 than it took them to conquer Iraq from an Army of 424,000 soldiers who mostly noped out and deserted.
And in 2nd Fallujah, the US had a 3 to 1 advantage in manpower, a massive firepower advantage, and the city was surrounded.
Also has it occurred to you that Russia has a completely different playbook? They have specific objectives in mind and an overall plan that achieves their socioeconomic-political goals.
They don't give a fuck what Western Analysts and failed NATO Generals think. They had to fool only one person: Zelensky. They only need to beat one Army: Ukraine's Army. Everyone else is irrelevant.
Did they hope the UkA would give up and nope out? Sure, but weren't counting on it, and if that was their plan, the entirety of the VDV would have been thrown into the North West and North East and Spetnaz would have targeted Zelensky as the first move.
What did they actually do?
They weighted the Offensive to the South with the aim of securing the Sea of Azov and setting the conditions to Operationally Encircle the Donbass. Everything else was a double feint to pin and draw out UkA.
In fact they didn't even expect to overrun Kherson so quickly and had too few troops to hold the town proper and instead focused on holding the bridge crossing and the overran Brigade Bases. They took a week to reinforce the advance here as they had more priority to the Azov Sea Offensive. Kherson was only ever meant to shield the Western Flank of the Azov Sea Offensive and secure ground for the second phase advance to Kryvy Rih in conjunction with a push from Donbas.
The major cities can largely be left to wither on the vine. If they fill up with troops, all the better. The Russians only need to take a few key cities to cripple UkA. Kryvy Rih is one of them. Dnipro and Pavlograd are the others. Seizing these Cities will affect the Operational Surrender of the UkA and render the state of Ukraine indefensible and all further resistance pointless.
