When Russians Bomb Your Town

Jarrah returned to Aleppo two months ago because he wanted to see for himself what the Russian intervention was really like. Were his fellow countrymen lying about the scale of devastation now being unleashed, with civilian death tolls starting to exceed those of the regime? Moscow has insisted, after all, that it was going after the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS and other “terrorists”—not fruit carts, bakeries, and hospitals. The Russian Defense Ministry has yet to claim responsibility for any civilian casualties and often denies striking in civilian-heavy locations which evidence suggests they have struck. But the claims of Russian collateral damage, Jarrah tells me, are “absolutely true. Russia is killing civilians and waging an information war. I want every single person on this planet to know that, whether they admit it or not.”