Ukraine withdraws from Avdiivka in biggest Russian victory in a year

Ukraine is withdrawing from Avdiivka. In this city in the Donetsk province, practically surrounded by Russian troops since the end of 2023, the invader’s flag will fly after the announcement at midnight on Saturday about the withdrawal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Its commander in chief, Oleksander Sirski, confirmed it in a statement in which he justified his decision “to avoid being besieged and preserve the lives of our men.”

Ukrainian military accounts on Telegram claim that there were nearly 5,000 defending soldiers in the city. This week there were public messages of alarm from the brigades resisting in Avdiivka, confirming that it was impossible to stop the enemy.

Sirski has now followed a different strategy from the Russian siege of Bakhmut in winter 2023. At that time, the now commander-in-chief was responsible for the army. Following orders from the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sirsky ordered troops to resist in the urban area of Bakhmut, where there was street-by-street fighting. That goal required concentrating a good part of the Ukrainian military potential in Bakhmut, but it caused a very high number of casualties and also gave Russia time to build fortifications along the entire front.

Avdiivka is a city adjacent to the town of Donetsk, illegally annexed by Russia. Taking this municipality allows the invading troops to reduce the risk of receiving artillery fire in Donetsk and gain a new stronghold to avoid a possible Ukrainian offensive in the future.

The Ukrainian army will remain in the Avdiivka perimeter, where in the last three months it has erected new defense lines. Russia is at its strongest since the first months of the invasion, with clear superiority in the number of troops, artillery, anti-aircraft defenses and, above all, in control of the aerial war thanks to its fleet of attack drones and surveillance aircraft.

Ukrainian troops on the front line in Avdiivka already told EL PAÍS last November that it would very difficult to resist the Russian siege beyond this winter. Artillery officers from the 47th Mechanized Brigade detailed that in Avdiivka they had 10 times less ammunition available than during the summer 2023 counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia. A mortar unit from the 110 Mechanized Brigade stated that if in 2022 the difference in ammunition was three to one in favor of the Russians, now it was eight to one.

The arsenals of Ukraine’s NATO partners are at minimum levels and the priority of the Ukrainian General Staff is to ration ammunition as much as possible. Kyiv’s other urgency is to immediately launch a new massive mobilization of troops to relieve hundreds of thousands of casualties, including the wounded and the dead. Around 880,000 people have been involved in the defense of the country, according to Zelenskiy’s official data, and the army believes it is now necessary to recruit 500,000 civilians. This mobilization is a cause of discontent among the population because fewer and fewer people are willing to join the fighting at a time when the meaning of the war is bleak for the interests of Ukraine.

Russia is advancing, little by little, on the Donetsk and Kharkiv fronts. The advance of the invading forces is slow, but constant because every few hundred meters they follow the strategy of raising trenches to secure their positions. The next Russian strategic objectives are the cities of Kupiansk (Kharkov) and Chasiv Yar (Donetsk), two municipalities that, due to their geographic conditions, serve as key defense bastions.

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