Even 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu advised avoiding storming cities because of the inevitability of heavy losses - much greater than in a field battle. In the early autumn of 1941, Hitler categorically forbade his generals to storm Soviet cities, but a year later he deviated from this rule at Stalingrad, which led to the defeat of Paulus’s army and a turning point in World War II. Stalin demanded that cities be taken at any cost - the numbers of Red Army losses in Budapest, Koenigsberg, Breslau, and Berlin are terrifying, inevitably making one think about the need for such operations. But they were generously awarded for successful assaults - in the USSR a whole constellation of medals “For the capture” of enemy cities was established. At the cost of a lot of blood, we managed to develop effective tactics for street fighting, create special assault groups, battalions and entire brigades, accumulate a wealth of combat experience, which, it would seem, guaranteed against repeating previous mistakes - however, half a century after the Victory, our generals again “treaded on the same rake" during the storming of Grozny...In the new book of the leading military historian, best-selling author of "Stalin's Line in Battle", "1945. Blitzkrieg of the Red Army", "Afghan War. Combat Operations" and "Purgatory of the Chechen War", the brutal experience of assaults and urban battles, which are still considered one of the most difficult types of combat operations, is comprehended and analyzed at a new level.