“Avdiivka is ours,” shouted Russian pro-war blogger Vladislav Shurygin on his Telegram channel on Saturday. According to the army expert, the fall of the eastern Ukrainian town that had served as a defense bastion against the Russian occupying forces for ten years for Kyiv shows that “nothing is going as expected for the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Elsewhere in the online domain, the Kremlin cheerleaders could not believe their luck in recent days. “Glorious fighters raise the Russian flag at the Avdiivka town hall,” TV presenter and longtime propagandist Vladimir Soloviev wrote on his Telegram channel. He accompanied the text with images of Russian soldiers throwing the Ukrainian flag from a completely destroyed building and replacing it with the Russian tricolor.
“The Nazis of the Ukrainian army are leaving the city as part of the ‘clearance,’” he wrote in another post accompanying a video of a tractor lifting a pig with a grapple. Talk show host Olga Skabajeva also praised the Russian occupation of the town in her own characteristic way: “The surrender of Avdiivka is being celebrated,” she said next to a photo of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg around a table with pastries and Champagne.
Heavy losses
But it is doubtful whether the hosanna atmosphere is justified. Military experts in the West point out that although Avdiivka was a symbol of Ukrainian resistance for years, the conquest is relatively insignificant from a military-strategic perspective. That Pyrrhic victory was underlined by a message from pro-war blogger Andrei Morozov. On Sunday, the Russian commentator wrote on his Telegram channel that at least 16,000 soldiers were killed and 300 armored vehicles were destroyed during the battle for Avdiivka. By comparison, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Red Army lost 15,000 troops in ten years.
Morozov came under intense criticism from numerous propagandists in Moscow. During Solovyov’s talk show, a guest in the studio called Morozov “a piece of shit who promotes defeatist ideas.” According to another attendee, the message read as “defamatory fake news against the Russian Ministry of Defense.”
On Tuesday morning, the campaign of harassment came to a tragic end when Morozov wrote on his channel that he had been put under intense pressure to delete the message. The threats came from ‘political prostitutes led by Vladimir Soloviev who are too shitty to pull the trigger themselves. Well, I’ll do it myself. I’ll shoot myself if no one wants to do this nice job.’ A day later it became known that Morozov had allegedly committed suicide.
Wipe sign for Ukraine
In any case, they will not have batted an eyelid about it in the Kremlin. Putin used the occupation of Avdiivka to encourage his troops to advance further. “As for the overall situation in Avdiivka, this is an absolute success,” he told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. “My congratulations, this must be continued.” The victory on the battlefield – the largest since the capture of Bachmut in May last year – is a ‘significant victory’ for Putin personally, the Institute for the Study of War said.
At the same time, it is a bad sign for Kyiv. After the fall of Avdiivka, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced that the city would not have fallen if Kyiv had received the military aid package that is being blocked in the US Congress for party political reasons. “We wouldn’t have lost Avdiivka if we had had all the artillery ammunition to defend it. Russia has no intention of pausing or stopping. Once Avdiivka is under their control, they will undoubtedly choose another city to storm.”
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After ten years of fighting, the Ukrainian bastion of Avdiivka has finally fallen. ‘We have too few weapons’
In fact, the battle for Avdiivka has been going on for ten years. Now Russia has captured the important Ukrainian defense bastion after all. “It’s hell,” says Ukrainian soldier Robi.
Weekend stories
2024-02-23 20:10:08
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