First make sure you have the tanks and planes and they don't. Second surround the city and seal it off. Then use your bombs and tanks from far away to reduce the city to rubble. (Some would say there is a risk of 'collateral damage', i.e. killing civilians, women and children, but you have to be tough to defeat the 'rebels' who are entrenched in the city. Can't let danger to civilians stand in your way. You start playing by the "rules" and you are weak and destined to lose. Besides the 'accidental' deaths of a lot of civilians sends a powerful 'message' to those who resist you. Just ask Vlad, George and Bashar.)
When the city is sufficiently 'softened up' send in your soldiers to do the block-by-block, house-by-house fighting against hopefully demoralized and weakened 'rebels' and the civilians that may be foolish enough to get in the way.
It is a classic neo-con battle strategy. You use your superior military power to defeat a weaker opponent; you and your country look "strong" and "respected" - not to be trifled with; battlefield success boosts your political popularity at home; you kill a lot of civilians (bad PR for a while but nobody pays attention for long) and destroy a lot of buildings and infrastructure (imagine the money to be made during reconstruction); not many of your guys get killed because you are blasting the city from miles away and high in the sky so there's relatively little political resistance back home.
The Kiev government has apparently done the first two, relatively easy, steps: they have the tanks and planes and the 'rebels' do not; they have surrounded the city and sealed it off. We shall see if they are really up for the next step - the big 'neo-con' step of unleashing the power of the tanks and planes on the 'rebels' in the city. So far Kiev has not shown the same level of 'determination' that Vlad, George and Bashar have shown in similar situations. That may change but I have my doubts.
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