You can't just compare Fallujah and Grozny. Of course urban warfare is destructive to the city no matter what, but the US and Russian tactics are very different, and so is the destruction. Dropping tons of low precision thermobaric weapons on a city is a Russian thing, unmatched in its destruction. (The is no American equivalent to the TOS-1[1] for instance).

That being said, that doesn't mean I approve US invasion of Irak in any way (because I do not), it just feels you're comparing Pearl Harbor with Stalingrad… (Ok, not literally, because there is a two orders of magnitude difference between Pearl Harbor and Stalingrad, but you get the idea).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1

> You can't just compare Fallujah and Grozny.

That's a fair statement. Depleted Uranium is a gift that keeps on giving.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3...

https://www.nuclear-risks.org/en/hibakusha-worldwide/falluja...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_populat...

There not discussion that DU has terrible long term impact, of course it has. The US aren't “good guys” who don't hurt civilians, nobody is arguing that!

Yet, “in terms of city leveling” Fallujah and Grozny are not comparable. That's it.

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80... the Russian army started to destroy Grozny with heavy bombings only after the initial plan, which was to drive the tank columns straight to the presidential palace, badly failed.

Their stated objective in Ukraine is not to take Kyiv, let's hope it's true.

I was thinking about Syria, not Chechnya, since that's a more recent major conflict with city captures that the Russians have participated in.