As the fighting has dragged on, Russia has gravitated toward tactics that, by design, hurt civilians. In particular, Russia is besieging Ukrainian cities, blocking the supply and escape routes of civilians, inflicting missile and bomb strikes from the air, land and sea. The purpose of the strategy is to wear down the Ukrainian defenders’ willingness to fight, including by inflicting mass pain on the civilian populations. The result has been nightmarish: an astonishing outflow of Ukrainian refugees and tremendous suffering for many of those who were unwilling or unable to leave. As a result, taking Ukrainian cities means besieging them — starving them out, destroying their will to fight, and only moving into the city proper after its population is unwilling to resist or outright incapable of putting up a fight.