Given what the Russian military did to Grozny in the Second Chechen War and what they did to Aleppo during the recent Syrian civil war, it's hard to dismiss the reports of intentional depopulation of cities as an intentional Russian military tactic.

In isolation it would be fair to be sceptical of the intercepted conversations where commanders are calling in strikes on residential areas, but this is a recurring pattern with the Russian military.

It's important to distinguish here between the Russian military and the Russian people. Conflating the two feeds into the Putinist propaganda that Russia will be hated in the West no matter what it does.