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Russia said on Saturday that its forces had inflicted a series of defeats on Ukrainian forces along the 1,000km front line just as Ukrainian troops withdrew from the devastated eastern town of Avdiivka.
The Ukrainian withdrawal from Avdiivka paves the way for Russia’s biggest victory since the May 2023 capture of Bakhmut after a deadly battle that left thousands dead in a devastated city with barely a building intact.
After the failure of Ukraine to pierce Russian lines last year, Moscow has been trying to grind down Ukrainian forces just as Kyiv ponders a major new mobilisation and president Volodymyr Zelenskiy appoints a new commander to run the war.
Russian forces made inroads against Ukrainian troops along the front lines in a number of different directions, according to the Russian defence ministry.
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“Avdiivka, as a major node of resistance for the armed forces of Ukraine, has fallen,” pro-Russian military blogger Yuri Podolyak said on Telegram.
Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of around 32,000 and is called Avdeyevka by Russians, was briefly taken in 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists who seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine but was recaptured by Ukrainian troops who built extensive fortifications.
Avdiivka sits in the industrial Donbas region, 15km north of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Before the war, its Soviet-era coke plant was one of Europe’s biggest.
“It is not yet fully clear whether the enemy, covered from two sides by Avdiivka coke, is surrendering or not,” said Mr Podolyak. “In general the situation is already clear – sooner or later we will take it. Since without this, it is pointless to continue strategically advancing here.”
Both Russian and Ukrainian officials say the battle for Avdiivka cost many thousands of lives, though neither side has given any casualty figures.
The West routinely gives estimates of Russian casualties in the war but rarely speaks about Ukrainian casualties which Moscow says are vast. Western intelligence assessments say hundreds of thousands of men on both sides have been killed or wounded in the war.
Avdiivka is the key to Russia’s aim of securing full control of the two eastern “Donbas” provinces – Donetsk and Luhansk. These are among the four Ukrainian regions Russia says it has annexed but does not fully control.
Avdiivka is seen as a gateway to Donetsk city, whose residential areas Russian officials say have been shelled by Ukrainian forces, sometimes from Avdiivka.
The New York Times reported that there had been chaotic scenes as Ukrainian forces retreated, with some of their wounded abandoned and soldiers starved of ammunition.
Russian forces control a little under one fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory. In the month to February 13th, Russian forces added 90 sq km of territory while Ukraine added just 2.5 sq km, according to the Belfer Centre’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card.
The withdrawal, announced as Ukraine faces acute shortages of ammunition with US military aid delayed for months in Congress, aimed to save troops from being fully surrounded by Russian forces after months of fierce fighting, Kyiv said.
General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who took the helm of the Ukrainian military in a major shake-up last week, said Ukrainian forces had moved back to more secure positions outside the town.
“I decided to withdraw our units from the town and move to defence from more favourable lines in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen,” he was quoted as saying in an armed forces statement.
The loss of the town nearly two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion may give president Mr Zelenskiy a stronger case to make to the West for more urgent military aid as he addresses the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning.
US president Joe Biden had said on Thursday that Avdiivka risked falling to Russian forces because of ammunition shortages following months of Republican congressional opposition to a new US military aid package for Kyiv.
Capturing Avdiivka is key to Russia’s aim of securing full control of the two provinces that make up the industrial Donbas region, and could hand president Mr Putin a battlefield victory as he seeks re-election next month.
Avdiivka has borne the brunt of mounting offensive pressure by Russian forces in the east as wavering western military aid has compounded the fatigue of troops fighting for almost two years.
“We are taking measures to stabilise the situation and maintain our positions,” Mr Syrskyi said.
The Third Assault Brigade, a prominent Ukrainian infantry assault unit, was rushed into the town to help reinforce troops this week as other Ukrainian forces pulled back from the southeast of the town.
The unit described the fighting as “hell” and said on social media that Ukrainian defenders had been outnumbered by Russian forces by a ratio of about six to 100 in some places. – Reuters
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