Avdiivka, an old stronghold for Ukraine, falls into the hands of the Russians
Ukraine ordered a complete withdrawal before dawn on Saturday from the devastated city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, surrendering a city that had been a military stronghold for nearly a decade despite devastating Russian bombing and brutal attacks.
“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of soldiers, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to the defense through more favorable lines,” General Oleksandr said Syrsky, Ukraine's top army. commander, said in a statement issued overnight.
The fall of Avdiivka, a city that once housed some 30,000 people but is now a smoking ruin, is the first major gain by Russian forces since May last year. In recent weeks, Russian forces have carried out the attack along almost the entire length of the 900-kilometer front.
Ukrainian troops had begun withdrawing from positions in the southern part of the city on Wednesday. They have been locked in a desperate battle for several days to prevent encirclement within the city, as Russian forces advance from multiple directions.
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Ukraine's armed forces in the south, said there was no choice but to withdraw, given Russia's advantage in firepower and the number of soldiers they were willing to throw into battle.
“In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of his own soldiers with a grenade advantage of 10 to 1, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution,” he said in a statement.
Some soldiers privately expressed concern in interviews that the call to withdraw had come too late, or posted grim stories on social media about their dangerous and chaotic retreat.
Viktor Biliak of the 110th Brigade, who has defended the city for the past two years, described Thursday his evacuation of the garrison known as Zenit, in a southern part of the city.
Mr Biliak, who uses the call sign Hentai, said his unit had no time for an orderly exit – neither to evacuate weapons and equipment, nor to burn papers and lay mines in the way of the attack on Russian forces.
Ten men made an unsuccessful attempt to leave on Wednesday evening, he said. They had to fight their way forward in a firefight, but then came under artillery fire.
“Only three injured people have returned,” Hentai wrote on Instagram. He helped rescue one of the wounded men the next morning, he said, a dangerous move in daylight that cost the unit four more wounded, including himself.
The troops made another attempt on Thursday evening and the seriously injured were told to wait for an armored vehicle to take them away.
“Groups left, one after another,” Hentai wrote. Still able to walk, he decided not to wait for the evacuation vehicle and led a group outside.
“There was no visibility outside. It was just survival. A kilometer across the field,” he wrote. “A bunch of blind cats guided by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.'
The evacuation vehicle never arrived for the injured, he said. The last group left the bunker and he heard a wounded soldier on the radio asking for the evacuation vehicle. The commander replied that no vehicle was coming and that they had to leave the wounded behind.
“He didn't know he was talking to a wounded man,” Hentai wrote. “This dialogue on the radio has hurt us to the depths of our hearts.”
As the battle for Avdiivka intensified, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area were forced to ration ammunition, they said. White House officials have seized on similar stories to argue that the failure to pass a renewed $60 billion military aid package in Congress directly undermined the Ukrainians' struggle on the ground. The Ukrainian government is also struggling to recruit and mobilize soldiers to fill depleted ranks after two years of often brutal fighting.
The town and surrounding communities have been on the frontline since Russian-backed militants seized territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014, but the Russians stepped up efforts to take the town in October, launching large-scale attacks to broadly control the area to surround. Those efforts largely failed and resulted in some of the heaviest Russian losses of the war, killing and wounding tens of thousands of soldiers, according to the Ukrainian military as well as British and American officials.
At the beginning of this year, the Russians managed to break into the city of Avdiivka itself, after which Ukrainian losses began to increase significantly. At the same time, Russia increased bombing of the city, attempting to destroy the heavily fortified Ukrainian defenses.
As the situation became increasingly dire, military analysts inside and outside Ukraine worried that its leaders would repeat a past mistake: holding on to the situation after it was clear hope was lost and unnecessarily spending Ukraine's most valuable resource, its population.
The withdrawal from Avdiivka was still underway on Saturday morning under devastating Russian bombardment. The Ukrainian military command said the withdrawal from the southern part of the city had occurred with “small losses.”
But soldiers post videos on social media revealed how dangerous movement in the area had become. In one video, several Ukrainian soldiers ride atop an armored vehicle just half a mile from the Avdiivka Coke Chemical Plant on the northwestern edge of the city, a landmark.
They drive past the 'Avdiivka is Ukraine' sign at the entrance to the city, made famous by President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a selfie video hence in December. Seconds later, the soldiers duck and grimace as grenades land just meters away from them, kicking up clouds of dust and dirt.
On Friday, the commander of the 2nd Mechanized Battalion of the Third Assault Brigade said the Russians had used incendiaries to ignite tanks storing dangerous fuel in the coking plant.
“When burned, this toxic substance has extremely serious consequences for the health and even the lives of our fighters,” he said in a statement. The wind sent plumes of toxic black smog over the city and seeped into the factory, which the Ukrainians had long used as a stronghold despite the Russian advance.
It was unclear early Saturday whether Ukrainian troops holed up in the plant had also withdrawn.
Volodymyr Furayev, a soldier stationed at the sprawling Soviet-era industrial plant, said his unit had been ordered to evacuate.
“I'm leaving the coking plant,” Mr. Furayev said in one post on TikTok. “Everything is focused. Hard to know where we're going. Hello to everyone who knows me. I don't know if we'll make it.”
His and other stories could not be independently confirmed, but the soldiers mentioned in this article are known to be members of the Ukrainian military with a public presence on social media, and the locations of landscapes shown in videos have been provided by The New York Times.
Reached by phone Friday, soldiers who asked not to be identified given the ongoing military action described a harrowing attempt to flee the city. They told how they raced past destroyed buildings as shells thundered from all sides and Russians pushed in from different directions.
“In one of the sectors in the city, fighters of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade are completely surrounded, but they are trying to break through, and they are succeeding,” said Major Rodion Kudryashov, deputy commander of the assault brigade. interview with Radio Freedom.
The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade was brought to Avdiivka about two weeks ago to help relieve the exhausted soldiers of the 110th Brigade.
Other units, including the 47th Brigade, which is equipped with American-supplied Bradley Fighting Vehicles, reported being tasked with blocking outlying areas to prevent further Russian advance beyond Avdiivka.
“Avdiivka is a very important strong point in the Ukrainian defense system,” because it protects Pokrovsk, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the northwest, a logistics hub for the Ukrainian military. Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, said in an interview.
“Taking over Avdiivka could create an opening for Russia,” he said.
Even if the lines stabilize after the Russians take the city, their fall will allow the Russian army to move its troops and equipment more efficiently as it pushes in other directions.
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Malachy Browne from Limerick, Ireland.