Two Ukrainian soldiers walk in the destroyed city of Avdiivka, Ukraine on Oct. 26. Fighting has intensified in the city in recent days after Russia launched a major offensive here earlier this month.Getty Images/Getty Images
The Ukrainian military has repelled two savage Russian assaults around the eastern city of Avdiivka over the past three weeks in what has emerged as one of the biggest battles of the war. The question is whether it can repel a third.
Ukraine hopes the Russians are tapped out, claiming they have suffered horrendous losses in their attempt to take the small, largely destroyed city and its surroundings. Avdiivka, which had a prewar population of 31,000, lies just a few kilometres north of Donetsk, the main Russian-controlled city in eastern Ukraine, and appears to have more propaganda value than strategic worth.
RUSSIA
80 km
Belgorod
1
UKRAINE
RUSSIA
Kharkiv
Izyum
Sieverodonetsk
Lyschansk
Bakhmut
Luhansk
2
UKRAINE
Avdiivka
Donetsk
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Mykolaiv
Tokmak
Map key
Melitopol
Kherson
Under Russian control
before Feb. 24
Odesa
Sea of Azov
Russian control
CRIMEA
Ukrainian
counteroffensives
Annexed in 2014
Cities under
Russian control
Sevastopol
Black Sea
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS
RUSSIA
80 km
Belgorod
1
UKRAINE
RUSSIA
Kharkiv
Izyum
Sieverodonetsk
Lyschansk
Bakhmut
Luhansk
2
UKRAINE
Avdiivka
Donetsk
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Mykolaiv
Tokmak
Map key
Melitopol
Kherson
Under Russian control
before Feb. 24
Odesa
Sea of Azov
Russian control
CRIMEA
Ukrainian
counteroffensives
Annexed in 2014
Cities under
Russian control
Sevastopol
Black Sea
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS
Avdiivka
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS
“From the point of view of the Russian narrative, Avdiivka is important,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow in Kyiv at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “If Russia wins this battle, they could use it to say that Ukraine cannot win the war.”
Certainly, the Ukrainians are giving the impression that Russia has grossly underestimated Ukraine’s ability to defend the Avdiivka area. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that Moscow had already lost an entire brigade in the battle, which began on Oct. 10 (a Russian brigade generally consists of 2,000 to 8,000 soldiers).
“The invaders made several attempts to surround Avdiivka, but each time our soldiers threw them back, causing painful losses,” he told Mr. Sunak.
British military intelligence, in a Saturday update, said that as many as eight Russian brigades have been thrown into the Avdiivka area, mounting “heavy but inconclusive” attacks. It added that the battle has shown that Russian war strategy has remained unchanged, in that “political leaders demand more territory to be seized but the military cannot generate the effective operational level offensive action.”
Three weeks into the battle, the Russian military has lost hundreds of men and more than 100 tanks and armoured vehicles, according to the Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank. The Ukrainians say 4,000 to 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured around Avdiivka, though those numbers cannot be independently verified.
Tamara cleans up fallen leaves near her destroyed house in Avdiivka, Ukraine, on Oct. 26.Getty Images/Getty Images
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Ukraine’s losses are thought to be horrendous, too, but the military does not release casualty figures.
Reports in the Ukrainian and foreign press, and video clips carried on social media, suggest the battle for Avdiivka is gruesome for both sides – and may stay that way as the Russians try to make a breakthrough before the weather turns wet and cold, making it hard to move armour.
There have been reports of human-wave attacks and hand-to-hand combat on the edges of the city, as the Russians plunge into Ukrainian trenches, and ferocious armour and artillery attacks by both sides.
The Ukrainian 55th Artillery Brigade is reportedly equipped with 10 formidable, French-made CAESAR self-propelled howitzers. Their 155-mm cannons can hit targets 40 kilometres away. Since the guns are mounted on six-wheeled trucks, they can move quickly after firing to avoid being targeted by Russian counterfire.
The Wagner Group mercenaries who played a big role in the Russian offensive until their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a suspicious plane crash in August have been fighting around Avdiivka. “Wagner group has returned to the combat zone in Ukraine,” reported Grey Zone, a Telegram channel affiliated with the group.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Thursday said the Russians had suffered “thousands of casualties in their effort to conduct this offensive.”
“We have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders … [or] seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire,” he added.
Ukraine’s military does not assume the Russians are ready to give up the fight despite their heavy losses. On Monday the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian security think tank, said that “after completing the regrouping, the adversary is expected to resume mass attacks and assault actions in the Avdiivka front in the near term.”
Mr. Bielieskov said most of the fighting was not in Avdiivka proper but in the areas to the northwest and west of the city. The Ukrainians may strengthen their flanks in these areas, forcing the Russians to retreat into the city itself, where they might get bogged down in the streets. “The difficulty of urban fighting would make it more difficult for the Russians to advance,” he said. “The Russian losses have been terrible, and they have to decide whether they are willing to stop or double down and expend more of their reserve soldiers.”
Avdiivka, an industrial city and a gateway to the Russian-controlled Donetsk region, has been the object of Russia’s military desires for about a decade. During the war in Donbas, which began in 2014, the city at times found itself on the front lines. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, it was largely destroyed.
Only about 1,000 people are thought to remain in its ruins, and the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant, once Ukraine’s largest producer of coke, a coal-based fuel used to make steel, is wrecked and abandoned.