I mean, Israel has demonstrated much the same approach (confined to a much smaller territory) nonstop over the past four months (first missiles and now 155mm artillery and tank shells), so it’s definitely not just an Eastern Europe thing.

Many Israelis are from Eastern European backgrounds, and it's plausible that they may have inherited some military culture from there.

Of you want to level a city, you either use obe big bomb, a lot of small ones (Israel doesn't have strategic bombers so) or a shit ton of ground fired shells and explosives.

Culture has nothing to with that.

Disclaimer: I consider leveling cities with the goal to displace people to be disgusting, and a borderline war crime. Regardless of the parties or reasons involved.

I’m not sure it has much to do with culture but almost everything with cost.

Missiles are extremely expensive and you’ll soon run out of them during a long war of attrition (especially in a symmetrical conflict like in Ukraine)

I don't actually understand why missiles are so expensive. You can buy an off-the-shelf turbojet engine for $1,000, and cheap toy drones are equipped with sophisticated guidance electronics. I'd have thought it shouldn't be hard to build a cruise missile with INS for under $20,000.

The “cute” gotcha here is that Israel doesn’t have to foot the bill, the USA is happily paying.

That's just called war. People just haven't seen it in long while.