“In accordance with the order received, (we) moved away from Avdiivka to pre-prepared positions,” Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnovsky, who commands the area, announced in a message posted on the social network Telegram from Friday to Saturday.
Especially since it faces a lack of resources due to the blocking of US military aid, Ukraine cannot avoid this defection in the face of Russia, which just days ago pushed its troops with more soldiers and ammunition to secure a victory. February 24 marks the second anniversary of the start of the invasion.
“This is the only correct decision in a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of his own soldiers and with ten times more bombs (…),” continued General Tarnowski. Ukrainian forces thus avoided encirclement, near a largely destroyed industrial city, he assured.
It was the first major decision by Oleksandr Chirsky, the new commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, after being appointed to the post on February 8. He justified it by a desire to “protect” the lives of his soldiers.
War in Ukraine: Russia shifts tactics to capture symbol of Ukrainian resistance
“with honor”
“I decided to withdraw our units from the city and switch to defense in more favorable ways,” Oleksandr Chirsky previously wrote on Facebook. “Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units and inflicted significant losses on the enemy,” General Sirsky continued.
Before formalizing the abandonment of the city, General Tarnovsky admitted that “many veteran” Ukrainians had been “captured” by Russian forces, who were outnumbered in terms of “manpower, artillery and air transport”.
Avtivka has an important symbolic value, having a population of about 34,000 before the Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
The town is now largely destroyed, but about 900 civilians remain, according to local officials. Moscow hopes the capture will make Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk more difficult.
Avdiivka fell to Moscow-led pro-Russian separatists in July 2014, before returning to Ukrainian control, despite the invasion and ten years of proximity to the separatist capital Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
According to Kiev, the Russian army has been mounting offensive waves to capture the city since October, despite the heavy casualties, reminiscent of the Battle of Bakhmaud, a city Moscow captured in May 2023 after a 10-month battle. Tens of thousands of deaths and injuries.
Also, Russian officials confirmed that they had thwarted several Ukrainian drone strikes overnight from Friday to Saturday.
The governor of the Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine, Vyacheslav Kladkov, and Vladislav Sapsa, north of the Kaluga region, announced on the Telegram social network that Russian air defenses had destroyed two and seven drones, respectively, over their border. According to the initial assessment, there was no damage.
Avdiyvka was captured at a time when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was leading a European tour.
He indicated that he was in permanent contact with the military command from Berlin, whose main task, according to him, was to save the lives of soldiers and “minimize losses”.
In this tense environment, Mr. Zelensky signed two bilateral defense agreements with German Chancellor Olaf Scholes in Berlin on Friday and later with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. He plans to attend a security conference in Munich on Saturday, where he will meet with US Vice President Kamala Harris.
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