Furthermore, Russia is not doing anything that it hasn't already been doing for almost a century.

Yes, it looks like tactics are pretty much aligned with what was going on during WWI and WWII.

On the other other hand, I think the West has not really been involved in this type of warfare since WWII/Korea, so we don't really have a point of comparison with Western tactics.

Large scale conventional warfare does not necessary involves shooting all men over 18 in an area or systematic rapes the way Russia army does. Not ever one of those wars turn into genocide.

We're commenting on the destruction in Mariupol so that's the usual strawman.

Are you saying that these things are somehow not happening in Mariupol? We already know that Mariupol has been a subject of population abductions at the very least.

That's another strawman...

I should know better than trying to discuss this sort of topic as it's obviously always impossible.

I'm not quite sure how you can mentally disentangle the destruction of a city from the destruction of its population. The two go hand in hand.

How is that strawman? Either of them. Real life behavior of Russian army (again) is not strawman. It is just what is going on.

It's not a strawman, it's a good point. Can you please point out records to me that there were orders (for American soldiers) in WW2 from the top down to take areas and rape, torture, and finally murder civilians in a systematic way like Putin is currently ordering to be done in Ukraine? I'm sure that it happened in some cases on a local scale from feet on the ground, but not top down like Russian top brass is ordering to happen in Ukraine.

Can you provide a source for this claim that Putin or 'top brass' has ordered the systematic rape, torture, and murder of Ukrainian civilians?

We don't even know that. All we know is that a large number of people in Mariupol were evacuated to Russia instead of through the frontlines to Ukraine. I can think of a lot of quite reasonable explanations for that.

The could have let them leave Mariupol over a few days. Instead they carted them off to concentration camps, that doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation/action to me.

These are areas they'd been trying to get civilians to leave for weeks. Humanitarian corridors kept collapsing. We don't know why, but is it at least plausible that Azov forces (who have a record of massacring civilians in Mariupol) were working to prevent it. (Eg how the hell did hundreds of civilians end up trapped in the azovstal steel plant?)

It is also plausible that some residents would prefer to go east to west. Not every resident of Eastern Ukraine supports the government. And we don't hear about it much, but reprisals and extra judicial killings of "collaborators" are happening.

Finally there is self interest. It's by no means certain that refugees who go west will be able to return to Mariupol after the war.

This will all get me voted down because it doesn't suit the narrative. I don't like the Russian invasion and I want it to fail but I also wish we were interested in the truth more than "winning the information war".

The russians could have let people leave Mariupol. I don't believe (and nothing you say would convinc me otherwise) that Putin doesn't have that much control over his own generals/top level officers. He's certainly picked a sad bunch but they can easily not launch artillery assaults at bus convoys leaving the city. They might have crappy comms but it's not that bad.

All we know is that a large number of people in Mariupol were deported to Russia