The withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the town of Avdiyivka and its capture by the Russian military gives Vladimir Putin an important symbolic victory ahead of Russia’s presidential election in March and exposes Kiev’s critical shortages of weapons and soldiers.
The significance of the victory for Russia is even greater as Avdiivka, a small industrial town in the eastern Donbas region, has been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression since 2014.
It is close to the city of Donetsk, which pro-Russian separatists control as their capital and which Moscow-backed fighters briefly seized in July 2014 before Ukrainian forces regained control.
Now the city is mostly ruined and abandoned, the vast majority of its pre-war population of around 34,000 having fled.
“Symbol of Ukraine’s determination on the battlefield”
Avdiivka “has been a symbol of Ukraine’s battlefield resolve and Russia’s military failure,” analyst Ivan Klijs of the Estonia-based Center for International Defense and Security told AFP.
But on the other hand, according to Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, it is “strategically insignificant”. “It would be a good trigger for a Ukrainian attack” on the city of Donetsk, but Ukraine cannot launch such an attack for at least two years and it would not make “sense to sacrifice soldiers now,” he added.
“Important victory for Putin”
For Vladimir Putin, whose re-election as Russia’s president in March is all but certain with the opposition silenced or exiled, Avdiivka is a “significant victory”, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
A spokesman for one of Ukraine’s top military units said the months-long battle for Avdiivka was even tougher than the bloody fighting in Bakhmut, another industrial city in eastern Ukraine, which the Russian paramilitary group Wagner claimed it captured in May 2023. .
Oleksandr Borodin, of Ukraine’s third assault brigade, pointed to Russia’s massive deployment of heavy equipment and air power as a “rain” of intense shelling of Ukrainian positions has taken place in recent days. Russia carried out tank and infantry attacks using “large numbers” of armored personnel carriers, Soviet-era tanks, airplanes and drones, while Wagner sent mostly infantry to the Bakhmut front.
Although Abdiivka’s defenses had been strengthened since 2014 and had taken heavy casualties since October, Russian forces managed to “penetrate the city itself” in mid-January, Gressel said.
In the past two weeks, Ukrainian lines of communication have been cut or compromised, while some areas have come under attack from all sides, he added.
Lack of missiles and fighters for Ukraine
The delivery of Western F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine is “too late” and Kiev’s forces are short of air-to-air missiles and artillery ammunition, undermining Avdiivka’s defenses, Gressel also said.
The withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Avdiivka was the right decision to avoid an encirclement and save as many lives as possible, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
“This does not mean that the soldiers retreated a few kilometers and Russia captured something, it captured nothing,” he added. The retreat is not surprising because Russia had virtually encircled Avdiivka, and the elimination of its units would be “disastrous” for Ukraine, said Mark Kanchian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The corridor leading out of the city is narrow and under fire. Retreat will not be easy,” he warned.
Ukrainian forces have been ordered to set up new defensive lines west and south-west of Avdiivka and the battle is far from over.
It remains to be seen whether Ukraine can defend the new line of defense and whether Russia has enough reserves to continue the offensive and make another major recapture, said Philippe Gross of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris.
According to a European military source, Ukraine is going on the defensive to hold out for the long term, fend off local Russian attacks and avoid wasting its capabilities by waiting for new Western aid, mainly from the United States.
Source: in.gr
