It reminds me in a sick way of how ISIS used to parody Western actions in their propaganda. Something similar to the enough sanctions argument heard here and there that people will rise up and remove X government if their lives are made shit enough. Likely to be about as successful.
Not just sanctions campaigns either, its also been used as rationale for various forms of bombing from above, including 'shock and awe'.
Some analysts thought Russia might follow that approach from the start, were somewhat surprised that they didnt, and attributed Russias failure to them not using this method.
If we want decent, comprehensive standards for what counts as a war crime, then attacking civilian infrastructure and various other things that ruin the lives of civilians should be part of the rules. But of course this has deep practical implications, it gets in the way of certain aspects of war that no side wishes to give up. And so we end up with a situation where the spirit of 'dont target civilians or their infrastructure' is evoked in lopsided manner, it becomes part of propaganda rather than a standard we truly seek to uphold under all circumstances, in all conflicts. Any rules about it are watered down, with plenty of large holes in them. And military manuals tend to have a built in get out clause that allows civilian infrastructure to be labelled as a legitimate target. Likely there have been attempts to narrow the definition of what counts as a legitimate target in international 'rules of war' but in practice we are still in a situation where the likes of the US Department of Defences manual ends up saying "Electric power stations are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a State’s capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry so as usually to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts.".
In my book this approach should be condemned whenever it happens, regardless of which side does it. So people are quite correct to be angry, upset and horrified when Russia does it and when they promote, explain and gloat about it in their propaganda. But lets not pretend its a new phenomenon, a brand new low that only Russia would stoop to. When this is pointed out it should never be used to excuse or justify the actions, only to acknowledge how commonplace it is. And something being common and done by all sides is not a reason to give up on loudly opposing it or the idea of consigning it to the dustbin of history.
