What you need to know about the fall of Avdiivka
Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the eastern frontline town of Avdiivka, top Ukrainian general Oleksandr Syrsky said on Saturday, allowing Moscow to score its biggest battlefield victory in months and dealing a blow to Ukraine's stretched and lagging armed forces to mark the biennial anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion is approaching.
General Syrsky said he had ordered the retreat “to prevent encirclement and preserve the lives and health of soldiers.” Avdiivka – once a city of 30,000 before it was reduced to ruins – was in a pocket surrounded by Russian forces in the north, east and south. Over the past few months, they had slowly advanced through relentless attacks, in a pincer movement.
“The ability to save our people is the most important task for us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. He added that Ukrainian forces were hampered by a shortage of ammunition due to declining Western military aid.
Here's what you need to know about the fall of Avdiivka.
How did the battle go?
Avdiivka is a suburb of the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, which has been on the front line since a Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The city has endured eight years of often low-intensity wars in the east and almost two more after that. years of large-scale attacks by the Russian military after it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The major offensive against Avdiivka began in October, when Russia launched several battalions against the edges of the city and shelled the area day and night. After being held on the outskirts of the city for months, Russian forces entered residential areas in late January, bypassing Ukrainian fortifications by crawling through tunnels under the streets of the southeastern part of Avdiivka. Earlier this week they cut the main supply route from Ukraine to the city and then advanced near a coking plant that had been a stronghold of resistance.
In keeping with Russia's scorched earth tactics in Ukraine, Moscow bombed the site into ruins and then sent wave after wave of troops in attacks that killed and wounded thousands, military experts said. Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that for every Ukrainian soldier killed, seven Russian soldiers had been killed. His claim could not be independently confirmed.
“I would say the motto of their attacks is: 'We have more people than you have ammunition, bullets, rockets and grenades,'” Tykhyi, a key combat member of the Ukrainian National Guard in Avdiivka, said in audio messages in late December. he only used his call sign to identify himself, according to Ukrainian military rules.
How important is the fall of Avdiivka?
The Russian capture of Avdiivka is a strategic and symbolic blow to the Ukrainian army. Avdiivka was a stronghold of the Ukrainian defense in the Donetsk region. It protected several key Ukrainian military positions further west and put the nearby Russian-controlled city of Donetsk at constant risk.
“Taking control of Avdiivka could create an opening for Russia,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies. He said Russian forces could next turn their sights to strategic cities such as Pokrovsk, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the northwest, a logistics hub for the Ukrainian military.
That would also bring them a small step closer to their goal of conquering the entire Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims to have annexed but does not fully control.
The capture of Avdiivka, Russia's biggest territorial advance since taking Bakhmut last May, could also become a bragging rights opportunity for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is seeking a fifth term in elections scheduled for March 17. Some Kremlin propagandists have already done that. praised this military victory as the most important of the entire war.
Avdiivka has been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance since Russian-backed forces first tried to capture it in 2014, and its fall could dent the morale of Ukrainian forces. Soldiers fighting there have spoken of exhaustion and sometimes misunderstanding of Ukraine's military strategy as the full-scale war continues.
What is the current state of the battlefield?
The fall of Avdiivka is the latest sign that Russian forces have decisively seized the initiative on the battlefield after Ukraine's summer counteroffensive failed to meet most of its objectives. The Russian army took control of Marinka, a small town southwest of Avdiivka, early this year as part of a series of local attacks it launched in eastern Ukraine last fall.
Heavy fighting has also taken place near Kupiansk, a small town about 40 kilometers from the border with Russia that was liberated from occupation last year. Months of heavy bombing have devastated the place, forcing most people to evacuate.
The Russians have also recaptured small areas of land in the south that were heavily captured by Ukrainian forces at the height of their summer counter-offensive, making progress around the village of Robotyne. Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, said Thursday that Russia now has more troops there than around Avdiivka, suggesting Robotyne was a prime target for the Kremlin.
It remains to be seen to what extent the Ukrainian army, now undermanned and out of ammunition, will be able to hold these cities in the face of endless Russian attacks, or whether it will have to fall back to more defensible positions.
In Bakhmut, Ukrainian troops held out for months in the city, trying to inflict as many casualties on the Russian forces as possible, but suffered heavy losses along the way. Many military experts and Ukrainian soldiers said this action had deprived Ukraine of vital resources ahead of its own counter-offensive.
General Syrsky, who commanded Ukraine's ground forces at the time, was widely criticized for this decision. The rapid withdrawal from Avdiivka is in stark contrast to his strategy in Bakhmut. “The lives of military personnel are of the highest value,” he said on Saturday.