Urban Warfare According to a Combat Marine

URBAN WARFARE TIPS
from a former Marine

This is as a direct reprint with permission from the original author.

Accompanying short video is on TikTok | YouTube
PDF Download: English | Ukrainian

I am a former U.S. Marine and am of Ukrainian ancestry. I can’t even believe I am making a post like this, but if someone has the ability to translate it to Ukrainian, please do. I fought in Iraq and was an Urban Warfare Instructor.

For the defenders of Kiev, here are the tips I can offer that I can say worked in Iraq (to the Iraqi’s advantage):

1. Stay out of the streets.
2. Stay out of the streets!
3. For the love of God, stay out of the streets!
   The worst place to be in an urban environment is to be outside.
4. Doors are called “the fatal funnel”.
   It is human nature to try and enter through a door.
   Aim all your weapons at the door to maximize the impact.
5. Block the door from the inside with anything you can: furniture, chairs, booby traps.
   The idea is to make the invaders think the door isn’t blocked. That way when they try to enter, they remain exposed for the longest amount of time as possible.
6. Stairways are another good elimination zone.
   Block stairwells with any obstacles to slow down invaders.
7. If you throw grenades downstairs, have your magazines fully topped off and ready. The invaders will most likely run up the stairs to run past the grenade blast. You’ll need all of the ammo that you have to stop the progression.
8. When possible, cut small holes in the floor into the rooms below to fire/drop explosives into. People breaching rooms will look for threats directly in front of them and usally don’t look above or below until last.
9. Don’t sling your weapon around your body. If things go hand-to-hand, it will hinder you.
10. Have a knife, spade, or club close-by and readily available. It’s much handier in close proximity fighting than a rifle.
11. Never fire from the same window twice.
12. Never stick the muzzle of your rifle outside of a window. Don’t expose it.
13. Shoot from deep inside the room out of the window. It will help hide the muzzle flash and reduce the noise, making it harder to tell where it came from.
14. If you wound an enemy, don’t kill him. Let his friends come to help him. Moving a wounded soldier means it will take 4 men out of the fight to carry him away. That’s 4 less rifles firing at you.
15. Aim for the guts. In a war zone, it is almost always a kill, but takes days to happen. Screams of the dying wounded are demoralizing.
16. Shoot the men trying to evacuate the wounded soldier. It will demoralize them and take even more men out of the fight.
17. If you see an officer, shoot to kill. Many armies are hierarchical in nature. The lowest ranking soldiers are possibly one year conscripts. They are trained to follow orders, not to use initiative. Killing 1 officer is much more effective in slowing down a conscript army than 1000 privates.