The fall of Avdiivka, a city that used to be home to some 30,000 people but is now a smoking ruin, is the first major gain Russian forces have achieved since May. In recent weeks, Russian forces have been pressing the attack across nearly the entire length of the 600-mile (1,000km) long front.
Ukrainian forces had begun withdrawing from positions in the southern part of the city Wednesday. They have been engaged in a desperate battle to avoid encirclement inside the city for several days, as Russian forces advanced from multiple directions.
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Ukraine’s forces in the south, said there had been no choice but to withdraw, given the Russian advantage in firepower and the number of soldiers they were willing to throw into the battle.
Some soldiers expressed concern privately in interviews that the call to withdraw had come too late, or posted stark accounts on social media of their dangerous and chaotic retreat. Viktor Biliak of the 110th Brigade, which has been defending the city for the past two years, described his evacuation Thursday of the garrison known as Zenit, in a southern pocket of the city.
Biliak, who uses the call sign Hentai, said that his unit was left no time for an orderly exit – neither to evacuate weapons and equipment, nor to burn papers and lay mines in the way of attacking Russian troops.
As the battle for Avdiivka intensified, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area were forced to ration ammunition, they said. White House officials have seized on similar accounts to assert that the failure to pass a $60 billion renewed military aid package in Congress was directly undermining the Ukrainians’ fight on the ground. The Ukrainian government is also struggling to recruit and mobilize soldiers to fill its depleted ranks after two years of often brutal fighting.