Russian forces storm Ukraine’s Avdiivka
KYIV: Large numbers of Russian forces are storming the frontline Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, its Ukrainian mayor said on Thursday, escalating a monthslong effort to capture the industrial hub.
Moscow launched in October a costly bid to seize the town, which has been caught up in fighting since 2014, when it briefly fell to Moscow-backed separatists.
“Unfortunately, the enemy is pressing from all directions. There is not a single part of our city that is more or less calm,” Mayor Vitaly Barabash told state media. “They are storming with very large forces.”
The capture of Avdiivka would provide a much-needed victory for Russia in the runup to the second anniversary of the launch of its invasion and its presidential election in March.
It would also mark the first significant change along the frontline in months, despite the fierce and costly fighting that has stretched the resources of both sides.
Yet analysts suggest that the town, which lies in a Ukrainian controlled pocket, holds little strategic value for either country’s armed forces.
Barabash said Moscow’s forces were mainly employing artillery, airstrikes and infantry in the assault, because Russian tanks and armored vehicles could not pass on the soft ground.
He described the fighting as “very hot” and “very difficult,” saying the “situation in some directions is simply unreal.”
Fewer than 950 residents of the town remain of an estimated prewar population of about 33,000 people, the mayor said.
Avdiivka is in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia, along with four other Ukrainian territories that Moscow says it has annexed.
President Vladimir Putin last month was the first Russian official to claim that his forces had gained a foothold in the town.
Further east in Donetsk, emergency services said on Thursday that one person had been killed and seven more injured during Russian shelling of the village of Selidove.
The last major victory on the front came from Russian forces in May, with the capture of the city of Bakhmut after months of costly fighting on both sides.
Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s army commander in charge of the region, visited Ukrainian troops holding back Russian forces on Bakhmut’s outskirts and warned of mounting Russian attacks.
“The situation is tense, requiring constant monitoring of the situation and prompt decision-making directly on the ground,” Syrsky was quoted as saying by the military on social media.
He said Russian forces were using kamikaze drones and electronic warfare alongside assault groups with artillery cover to break through Ukrainian defense lines outside Bakhmut.
Kyiv also said on Thursday that Russia had launched another barrage of Iranian-designed attack drones at Ukraine overnight, and that its air defense systems had downed 11 of 17 drones.
Officials in the Black Sea region of Odesa said the attack had damaged a school and left two police officers injured, while in the Vinnytsia region, authorities said debris from downed drones had led to a fire at an infrastructure facility.