The Mercury News

Russia mounts broader attacks in attempt to advance

- By Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Russian forces have stepped up their shelling of Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, as Moscow attempts to mount a broader offensive against a heavily defended front line in the Donbas region.

While the battle for the city of Bakhmut has become the main focus of Russian attempts to secure territory in the region, Avdiivka is one of several areas where Moscow is intensifyi­ng its attacks along the 160-mile, crescent-shaped front line in the east, Ukrainian officials say.

For weeks, Russia has thrown tens of thousands of soldiers into battles up and down eastern Ukraine in an attempt to drive the Ukrainians out of well-fortified positions. The deadliest fighting has been in and around Bakhmut, where both sides are trying to degrade the other in a monthslong battle of attrition, but the Ukrainian military's General Staff is routinely reporting more than 100 attempts by Russian forces to break through their defensive lines each day.

Many of the individual battles relate as much to key roads and supply lines as to control over now-devastated towns and villages. The length of the battle for Avdiivka illustrate­s how difficult it has been for Russian forces to take further ground in the east, where both armies have establishe­d significan­t defenses and Ukraine has reinforced its positions.

Russian troops fired two shells at an abandoned school in the town on Monday, killing a local woman, according to a post by Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine's president's office, on the social messaging app Telegram. He posted two photograph­s of a three-story building that had been reduced to rubble. Russian forces also fired three other artillery rounds at the town, according to the head of the regional Ukrainian military administra­tion, Pavlo Kyrylenko, writing on Telegram.

There was no independen­t confirmati­on of the reports. The town had a population of 31,000 before the war, but almost all its inhabitant­s have fled. Kyrylenko said that Russia also shelled nearby communitie­s.

Kyrylenko said Russia's attacks included the use of cluster munitions, which rights groups say can disproport­ionately harm civilians. His account could not be independen­tly confirmed.

The Ukrainian General Staff said in a daily report that its forces had repelled attacks in the town itself as well as in at least five nearby settlement­s. The attacks form a pattern of destructio­n, according to other officials.

Russia “has been massively hitting the villages near and on the way to the town over the past week,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka's military administra­tion, said on Ukrainian television over the weekend.

 ?? TYLER HICKS — THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? A Ukrainian soldier with the 45th Separate Artillery Brigade fires a French TRF1155mm towed howitzer in the Donetsk province of Ukraine on Sunday.
TYLER HICKS — THE NEW YORK TIMES A Ukrainian soldier with the 45th Separate Artillery Brigade fires a French TRF1155mm towed howitzer in the Donetsk province of Ukraine on Sunday.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States