The Reason Russia Is Curtailing Its Attacks Around Avdiivka

Even for Russia, there are only so many troops and armored vehicles to lose for no gain before someone starts asking questions like, "what are we accomplishing?" JL 

Ellie Cook reports in Newsweek:

Russian forces have scaled back their infantry attacks around Avdiivka. Infantry attacks have been a key part of Russia's strategy to encircle the town since it launched its offensive on Avdiivka on October 10. But it has come at a high cost, with tens of thousands killed or injured around the industrial town. "Thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away."

Russian forces have scaled back their infantry attacks around Avdiivka as Moscow shifts the onslaught on the embattled Donetsk town to aerial assaults and artillery, Ukraine has said.

Russia has "somewhat reduced the number of infantry attacks" it has launched on Avdiivka, but is "actively conducting airstrikes and shelling our positions with artillery," Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukraine's Tavria group of forces that covers Avdiivka, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Over the previous 24 hours, Russia carried out 25 airstrikes and launched 937 artillery barrages across that section of the front line, Tarnavskyi added. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

 

Infantry attacks have been a key part of Russia's strategy to encircle the town since it launched its offensive on Avdiivka on October 10. But it has come at a high cost, with tens of thousands believed to have been killed or injured around the industrial town that sits on the doorstep of Donetsk City.

 

"Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told The Economist in an article published on Monday, referring to the bitter fighting around Avdiivka.

 

Russian forces lost 386 troops, an ammunition depot, six artillery systems and 14 drones across the Tavria line on Tuesday, Tarnavskyi said. Russia does not typically mention Avdiivka in its daily updates, but said on Tuesday that Ukraine lost 300 fighters and three tanks across the Donetsk stretch of the front line over the previous 24 hours.

In late November, the British Defense Ministry said a spike in Russian losses in the last months of 2023 was largely down to the offensive on Avdiivka.

But if Russia succeeds, it would be a significant strategic victory. Capturing Avdiivka would allow Moscow to greatly expand its logistical operations, jeopardize Ukraine's operations against Russian positions in Donetsk City and could pave Russia's path to Kostyantynivka—a "quite important stronghold," Serhiy Hrabsky, a military analyst and former Ukrainian army colonel, told Newsweek. Kostyantynivka is then on the approach to the industrial zones around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, still firmly under Ukrainian control.

 

Tarnavskyi told the BBC in late December that the situation around Avdiivka was "constantly changing," and that Ukraine was always moving its units around in response to Russian operations.

 

Ukraine is holding its defensive lines, with Russia pressing on with its offensive around Avdiivka, Kyiv's military said on Wednesday. Kyiv repelled 24 attacks by Moscow's troops along the Tavria front in the past day, the General Staff said.

Russian forces advanced northwest of Avdiivka in recent days, according to the latest analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank.