Absolutely disagree, Russia did learn a lesson from Chechnya except it was the wrong one. The Russians won the Chechen war- and the first had Chechens equipped with MIG jets and tanks from those who had served in the Soviet army.
the second Chechen war had mysterious bombings in Moscow and Ryazan- where Russian security forces were caught laying explosives( and later claiming they were fake explosives and it was a training exercise.) All led by Putin’s FSB. And Putin running for President with a popularity of just 10%….those bombings and Putin blaming it on Chechnya and promising to finish the job- made him soar into the presidency. This proved the value of a narrative even if false. Like before Feb 24 the nonsense that Ukraine had nukes and biolabs and NATO was about to attack Russia.
The main point Putin learnt was why put troops at risk in an urban environment- bomb from a distance instead. To win the war, they flattened Grozny, basically destroying the whole city. Then they put Kadyrov’s family in charge, and spent a pretty penny in rebuilding everything.
That kind of campaign worked on Aleppo. At least the bombing part.
They could MAYBE get a similar effect if they flattened Kyiv. despite a lot of rhetoric, doing that to Kyiv, the former capital of Kievan Rus and a spiritual home to Russians. Would really change the mood of the war. A lot of Russians would baulk at that.
Right now Russia is bombing civilian targets and infrastructure. And all those missiles flying at citizens shows the lessons of world war 2 are also forgotten. If the Germans had continued to pound the British airfield and war factories, there probably wouldn’t have been a second front and possibly no D-day. Instead they switched to bombing the cities to demotivate the population and that got the English military a chance to rebuild.
The more Russia wastes its very finite supply of weapons on non military targets ,the more breathing room it gives the Ukrainian army. And as time ticks by, more and more goodies arrive and more Ukrainian troops are trained in Poland, Germany and the UK.
Russia learnt you could bomb a people into submission then create a puppet to enforce your law. That’s what Russia was hoping for in its blitzkrieg from Belarus and paratrooper landing(quick seizing of government to install a puppet) and now (bombing people into submission). The former failed and the latter will fail.
So Russia did learn from the Chechen wars- but it was the wrong lesson.
