Humanitarian corridors are a bad idea too, but what’s better?

I’ve already said that a no fly zone won’t fly. It risks bringing the US into direct conflict with Russia. That’s a bad idea because the escalatory ladder could end in a nuclear exchange. That would be far worse, especially for Americans, than anything happening now.

Humanitarian corridors are target-rich

Another much-ballyhooed proposal would establish humanitarian corridors for the safe evacuation of civilians from population centers. They too are not a good idea. For the Russians, any territory on which adversaries gather to evacuate is a target-rich environment. They have demonstrated unequivocally in Syria that they will attack evacuation routes. They have already done it again in Ukraine in recent days. The Red Cross has said one designated humanitarian corridor leading out of Mariupol is mined.

Far better would be an international effort to stop the shelling that gives rise to the humanitarian corridors proposal. Mariupol is under siege. The Russian army is shelling the city’s civilian areas, targeting among other things hospitals:

Both the siege and the shelling are war crimes. International humanitarian law permits attacks only on belligerents, not civilians, the means to supply them, or medical services.

Stopping the sieges

How to get the Russians to stop? Ideally, the Russian commanders would have refused to shell civilian areas or lay siege to population centers. They know full well those are war crimes. Since they have not seen fit to do the right thing, every Western general who knows one of them should be calling to object. Russian commanders should understand that for the rest of their lives professional soldiers will view them as war criminals, not colleagues.

That isn’t likely to work, so we come to military solutions. The Ukrainian army would break the sieges if it could. One possible move would be airdropping humanitarian supplies. This too doesn’t work well. It is hard to target them to the right people. The planes carrying the supplies are the flying equivalent of sitting ducks. They are slow. They don’t carry much. Lacking their own active defenses, they are vulnerable, especially as they descend to drop supplies.

If the Russians won’t agree to stand off, the transport planes would need to be protected. That is not a pretty picture. It is also one that could lead to direct conflict between the Russians and NATO.

Another possibility is for the Ukrainians to surrender some population centers to enhance the defense of others. That is apparently what they did at the beginning of the war when they moved air defenses from the south to Kyiv. This would risk losing more of the southern coast, including Odesa. It is not an attractive proposition. But if it were to lead to a major defeat of Russian forces aimed at besieging Kyiv it might be worth the cost. Abandoning Kyiv to enhance defense of Odesa is too risky. Once the capital is gone, defeat can’t be far off.

Only winning will save the civilians

The Ukrainians face an adversary who doesn’t care about international humanitarian law. Winning the war quickly would save the most civilians. That isn’t likely. The Russian offensive has stalled, so Putin will double down. Odds are the Russians will continue waging their war of aggression, targeting of civilians, and besieging of population centers. Humanitarian corridors are a bad idea, but what’s better?

PS: Here for your viewing pleasure is a little something about Foreign Minister Lavrov, who is supposed to be negotiating humanitarian corridors: