Fears of Grozny and Aleppo haunt Ukrainian cities

Human Rights Watch and Russia's Memorial group estimate the number of civilians killed in the Grozny siege at around 10,000

Images of devastation from the Ukrainian cities like Mariupol, Chernihiv and Kharkiv bring back memories of the bloody sieges of Aleppo in Syria and the Chechen capital Grozny, both razed on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Syrian regime backed by Russian air power retook the key rebel bastion of Aleppo in December 2016 after a siege whose final bloody weeks cost 1,867 lives.

Syria's economic capital had been divided between districts loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the west and rebel-controlled areas in the east.

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In September 2016 the regime launched its final campaign.

Russian warplanes bludgeoned rebel-held parts of Aleppo, which came under a blitz of barrel bombs, shells and rockets.

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The regime took the whole ruined city in December as a horrified world looked on.

"Without Russia, nothing would have happened with Aleppo," said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

In an emotional appeal at the time, Samantha Power, the US envoy to the United Nations, asked Assad and his backers Russia and Iran: "Are you truly incapable of shame?"

The capital of Chechnya, a small republic in the Caucasus where separatists fought two wars against Moscow, was razed during the winter of 1999-2000 by Russian artillery and air strikes.

The bloody battle was ordered by then prime minister Putin, helping seal his rise from little-known former KGB officer into Boris Yeltsin's successor on New Year's Eve 1999.

The UN at the time described Grozny as the most destroyed city in the world.

US rights group Human Rights Watch and Russia's Memorial group estimate the number of civilians killed in the siege at around 10,000.

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