When the front line stagnates and doesn't move even a kilometer for weeks, armies sooner or later turn to another target — not the enemy's trenches, but its cities. This is not a new invention by the Kremlin. The world has seen this logic before during the Iran-Iraq war, which contemporaries aptly named: the war of cities.

By the mid-eighties, the positional war on land had completely bogged down in a multi-year "war of attrition" — the front hadn't shifted in either direction for years, and the cost of each meter was measured in tens of thousands of lives. Then Saddam Hussein tried to achieve with missiles what he couldn't with tanks. Iraqi aviation and ballistic missiles struck Tehran and other Iranian cities, and Iran responded with its own "Scuds" on Baghdad. Both dictators counted on the same thing: that the civilian population would not withstand the constant fear and would pressure their government to capitulate.

The most terrifying period was the spring of 1988, when Iraq launched dozens of "Al-Hussein" missiles with extended range at Tehran, and the capital's population, fearing chemical warheads, fled en masse. Over eight years of this war, thousands of civilians on both sides were killed, tens of thousands were injured, and both capitals suffered significant destruction. Yet, there was no capitulation due to a broken will to resist.

The war ended in August 1988 not because any capital surrendered. It ended because both armies were exhausted on the front.

Iraq regained control over lost territories, Iran recognized the futility of continuation, and the ruins of cities became the backdrop of this war, a heavy and bloody backdrop, but not its victorious finale. Neither Tehran nor Baghdad was broken by the missiles; what broke was the ability of both armies to continue the offensive.

We observe the same logic today. When battles for Kostyantynivka or Pokrovsk are measured in meters per week at the cost of thousands of lives, Moscow again seeks victory not in the trenches but in the rear: in strikes on power substations, residential areas, port infrastructure. The calculation is the same as Saddam's forty years ago: where tanks do not pass, missiles will fly, and sooner or later, a society tired of darkness and cold will force its government to capitulate.

But there is something that hasn't been present in wars with Russia before — this is the new element in this war. For years, Russia had virtually a monopoly on striking civilian targets deep in the rear, while Ukraine could only respond in border areas with a few types of long-range weapons of its own production. This asymmetry gave the Kremlin a sense of complete impunity: to destroy without fear of seeing the same in its own mirror. Today, this monopoly is ending — and ending faster than could have been imagined in Moscow even a year ago.

On the night of August 9, this became particularly evident. Russia launched one of the largest attacks of the year on Odesa — with ballistic, anti-ship, and anti-radar missiles, and dozens of attack drones. The energy infrastructure was damaged, leaving residents of three districts of the city without power, and there was destruction of residential buildings. That same night, Ukrainian drones massively attacked Belgorod: fires broke out in several districts of the city, including the center, damaging high-rise and private houses, according to the acting governor of the region, Oleksandr Shuvaev — thirteen were injured.

This is no longer a war where only one side burns while the other watches from a safe distance. This is a mirror that nightly returns to Russia the same image it considered exclusively Ukraine's fate for decades, and which, judging by everything, caught the Kremlin off guard by its repetitiveness.

Does this mean the Kremlin will make concessions sooner? The experience of Iran and Iraq warns against excessive optimism: there, mutual city strikes lasted for years and did not bring peace by themselves; peace was achieved only by the exhausted resource base of the front, not by a broken psyche of the rear. Both capitals withstood much more than was expected of them on the eve of the war. The same scenario could well repeat here: Moscow is capable of enduring strikes on Belgorod or Kursk as long as Tehran endured Saddam's missiles.

But there is one significant difference, and it is this that gives grounds for hope. In Iran and Iraq, decisions about war and peace were made by dictators for whom the suffering of their own rear was never the main argument. Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein considered the price acceptable as long as the army held the front. Putin's regime is built on the same logic of tolerance to others' pain. But it also relies on the myth of its own inviolability, on the belief of the Russian layman that war is something that happens far away, to someone else. For Russians, war is only what happens on their own territory, which is why the date June 22, 1941, arose, although World War II involving the Soviet Union's army was already in full swing by then. Thus, it is the myth of inviolability, not the fighting spirit of the army, that is shattered every time Belgorod burns just like Odesa.

There is also another dimension here that was not present forty years ago in the Persian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq war remained essentially a private affair of two dictatorships — the world watched, sometimes supplying weapons to both sides simultaneously, but had no direct interest in it until shipping in the Gulf itself was affected. The Russian-Ukrainian war is different: Ukraine is supported by a coalition of democracies supplying long-range strike technologies. The very symmetry — the fact that Ukraine can respond not only on the battlefield but also in the enemy's airspace — becomes an additional argument for Western partners in favor of further support.

It is easier to justify the supply of missiles when the weapons not only hold back the offensive but truly change the enemy's calculations. The symmetry of cities is not only psychological pressure on Moscow but also a political resource for Kyiv in negotiations with its own allies.

Putin started this war convinced that only Ukrainian cities would burn. Now St. Petersburg, Cheboksary, Voronezh, Belgorod, and even Moscow itself are ablaze. This does not yet bring the Kremlin's capitulation closer: the history of Iran and Iraq teaches not to rely on this. But it destroys the main illusion on which Russia's readiness to continue the war indefinitely was based — the illusion of impunity.