Fighting in Urban Areas

Urbanization as a socio-demographic phenomenon is determined by the interaction of three factors: natural growth of the urban population; migration growth (redistribution of the rural population in favor of cities with economic attractiveness, advantages in the development of social infrastructure, etc.); administrative and territorial transformations of localities of other status. Part of the growth of cities is also due to the formation of more or less extensive suburban areas and urbanized areas. The living conditions of the population in these areas are becoming more and more similar to those in large cities, which are the centers of gravity of these zones. The instability of the political situation in several States, exacerbating the contradictions of territorial and ethnic nature, as well as socio-political differentiation in a number of States, increasing their energy dependency, deepening economic contradictions led to a conflict situation in some regions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, Syria).This is evidenced by thevarious armed conflicts of the past decades, which have shown that there have been significant changes in the conduct of hostilities. Modern armed forces, equipped with a large number of armored weapons, having powerful means of destruction involved in such conflicts were forced to move away from the usual "field", "trench" tactics.Large formations and units with various means of reinforcement were sometimes powerless against small groups of the enemy using their own" non-standard " tactics, which were based on complex urban conditions.From the point of view of military specialists, a city is a system that includes three interrelated elements: terrain, population, and infrastructure, connecting these two elements into a single urban space.