As Simplicius has been predicting, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been driven from Avdeevka after a prolonged siege. The abandonment of the fortifications there should enable the Russian forces to quickly push back the front line far enough to finally end the shelling of Donetsk, the region’s capital city.
Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave the city of Avdeevka, Kiev’s newly-appointed commander-in-chief has said, claiming the decision was intended to preserve the “lives and health” of soldiers following months of desperate attempts to hold on to the frontline town near Russia’s Donetsk.
General Aleksandr Syrsky announced the pull-out in a statement shared on social media in the early hours of Saturday morning, arguing that the withdrawal was part of “measures to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions.”
“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines,” he said.
The order follows reports that Ukrainian troops in the area were almost fully surrounded and faced near-constant attacks in recent days, with one local commander saying fighting in the area was “several times more hellish than the hottest battles of this phase of the war.” He was referring to the earlier struggle over the city of Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which fell to Russian troops last year following a lengthy siege.
It’s informative to observe that only days after a battalion from the Azov Brigade went in as reinforcements, and General Zaluzhny – who had long advocated a retreat from Advdeevka – was replaced, that the order for the withdrawal was given. It appears that the Ukrainians have finally begun to consider the idea that preserving one’s soldiers for future battles rather than sacrificing them en masse for the glory of Ukraine is a militarily sound one.
However, it also appears that Zelensky has successfully stage-managed the difficult transition from “inevitable heroic victory” to “retreat to maintain our positions” without being ejected, couped, or otherwise removed from office. Which presumably explains the attempts of the media clowns to try to generate some enthusiasm for fighting Russia in the memory of some Russian whose name no one knows and about whom no one cares.
UPDATE: Doesn’t sound like it was an orderly retreat or a fighting withdrawal.
Russian forces have “completely captured” the city of Avdeevka, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday. Some 1,500 Ukrainian troops were killed as they retreated, leaving their weapons and equipment behind, the ministry said. The seizure moves the front line further away from the city of Donetsk, thereby shielding its civilian population from bombardment by Ukrainian forces. Situated around 20km away, Avdeevka had been fortified and used as a staging ground for such attacks since 2014.