Civilian casualties: military error or political choice?

A Ukrainian drone attack last week targeted the dormitory of a professional college in Starobilsk, a town in the Russian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast. Starobilsk has been under Russian control since 2022. This incident has once again brought to the limelight an issue of grave concern in modern warfare which is being ignored completely. The issue concerns the geographic overlap between military assets and civilian infrastructure, especially in occupied towns near operational zones.

Contemporary warfare has brought conflicts to the cities, which are now under attack with drones, missiles, cyber capabilities, long-range precision weapons and hybrid warfare tactics. Earlier this year, on 28 February, we witnessed a US military strike at a girls' school in Iran, and the Iranian authorities claimed that the strike caused mass civilian casualties, though independent verification remains contested. Now we have this drone strike by Ukraine on the night of 21-22 May that has resulted in 21 deaths and 40 injuries (all girls between 14 and 18). This is being seen as one of the deadliest strikes involving civilian casualties in the Russia-Ukraine War.

Modern warfare has blurred civilian and military spaces, and civilian collateral damage is no longer seen as a war crime. Civilian damage and destruction are not merely a military phenomenon; they are more a consequence of deliberate political choices. Earlier, conventional inter-state wars were fought on defined battlefields, but modern battlefields are densely populated urban centres, as can be witnessed in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Israel and Ukraine. This brings civilians and civilian infrastructure increasingly in the line of fire. In modern warfare, civilians are no longer merely "collateral" to the combat. They are increasingly exposed to the operational logic of war. On civilians, the war's effects are imposed as part of political objectives to gain quick and decisive victories. These theatres of war – Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Ukraine – show how coercing populations, breaking civilian morale and weakening state capacity are all elements of modern warfare, not only to create conditions on the ground to force negotiations but also to shape a favourable international opinion in the process. The military operations are increasingly conducted not on any given front line but against civilian populations, power grids, oil refineries, hospitals, transport, communications and food storage and distribution systems. The strike on the college dormitory in Starobilsk clearly illustrates this growing modern warfare tendency in which we find that the civilian and military spaces are being increasingly blurred. Russia described the strike as a strike on students, while Ukraine claimed military drone operators were present nearby. Regardless of intent, the young girls in Starobilsk became the principal victims of the Ukrainian drone strike, like the young girls in the US attack on Iranian school.

For the last few years, civilians have suffered catastrophic levels of death, displacement, hunger and infrastructure destruction. Both the strike by the US at a school in Iran and this drone attack at a college dormitory by Ukraine demonstrate how drones, missiles and long-range strikes expose civilians far from battlefronts. Even where the conventional frontlines are unclear, like in Sudan, the use of cheap drones is devastating civilian lives. According to a UN report, drones caused 80% of casualties in the early months of 2026 in Sudan.

Since war is fundamentally political, political leaders bear primary responsibility for the strategic conditions that produce civilian harm. To a significant extent, this seems a valid political and philosophical argument, especially if one follows the classical idea, associated with Carl von Clausewitz, that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." If war is an instrument used for political purposes, then it is the political leadership, like President Trump, President Putin, PM Netanyahu and President Zelenski, who bear the fundamental responsibility for taking the ultimate decision to fight a war under clearly defined political objectives, setting up rules of engagement, deciding whether civilian infrastructure can be targeted, and laying out acceptable costs of war. One may argue that generals execute strategy, but the politicians define the political logic within which the strategy must operate.

The political logic of war in Gaza as defined by Netanyahu was not just battlefield success against Hamas but the destruction of Hamas's complete governance and military capacity. This political logic shaped the intensity of the military campaign, and despite the predictable humanitarian consequences, generals executed a military strategy that resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.

In the Iran war, the American political logic aimed at weakening Iran's deterrent and nuclear capability rather than occupying territory. Long-range strikes, covert support to protesters for regime change and naval blockade – all reflected this political logic. Meanwhile, Iran adopted a political strategy of endurance, regime survival and attritional warfare rather than decisive conventional confrontation.

In the Russia-Ukraine War, Putin's political logic was based on a simple principle – preventing Ukraine's Western integration and reasserting Russian influence. Those political objectives shaped military actions ranging from the initial invasion to prolonged attritional warfare. Conversely, Zelensky framed his political logic of war around sovereignty and territorial restoration – a distant prospect without Western military and economic aid. The Ukrainian drone warfare which seems to have gone horribly wrong after the dormitory attack is rooted more in political calculations than purely battlefield decisions. Considering that Ukraine's war effort depends heavily on Western military, financial and intelligence support, the US and Europe definitely influence the political calculations of the war, including the employment of drone warfare.

Modern warfare puts greater responsibility on the political rather than the military leadership. If the political logic of the war is correctly framed, the military and strategic logic is likely to operate within its framework. The matter of attribution of loss of innocent lives cannot just be left to deciding whether the committed act was deliberate or an accident. The world has to somehow wake up to decide that war fighting needs to be brought back to the front lines from the schools and dormitories, where children study and play, and where young girls reside.