Ukraine had a tough choice to make over troops in Avdiivka. The West cannot afford for that to keep happening

Saving lives was the priority says Volodymyr Zelensky, as delays to military aid from the US will only add to pressures on the battlefield, writes Askold Krushelnycky in Kyiv

Ukrainian soldiers fire an anti-tank grenade launcher towards Russian troops in Avdiivka (Reuters)

Ukrainian military and political leaders told The Independent late last year that they had contingency plans should the key town of Avdiivka fall.

So when the decision was made to withdraw from the devastated eastern town, which has gained symbolic significance to both Ukraine and Russia beyond its tactical worth, it was undoubtedly a setback – but not the nightmarish disaster it could have been. Ukrainian forces have fallen back to previously prepared defences, to avoid being encircled with consequent enormous casualties and thousands of soldiers taken as prisoners of war. Some soldiers were still taken in the retreat, thanks to what Ukrainian commanders called the “overwhelming enemy forces”.

Ukraine’s new military commander, General Oleksandr Sirsky, announced the retreat saying: “I decided to pull our units out of the town and redeploy them to more readily defendable positions. We are taking measures to stabilise the situation and to retain the new positions.

“In any event,” he said, “we will return to Avdiivka.”

Ukrainian servicemen build fortifications not far from Avdiivka on Saturday (AFP)

Avdiivka is virtually a suburb of Donetsk, the southeastern city which in 2014 was captured by pro-Russian forces and became what Russian president Vladimir Putin hoped would be a springboard for conquering far larger swathes of Ukraine.

However, Ukraine managed to contain Russian forces at that time to the region around Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk province, known as Donbas. Low-level conflict, with periodic bloody eruptions, simmered for another eight years along the borders of Moscow’s puppet “People’s Republic of Donetsk” mini-state. When full-blown war started in 2022 the Russians made more determined attempts to take Avdiivka.

Avdiivka became a bone stuck in Putin’s craw: tantalisingly close, at just a few miles from Donetsk city, but proving impossible to take and all the while blocking Moscow’s attempts to capture more of the region.

As Avdiivka repelled successive attempts to capture it, the town’s significance grew, in Putin’s obsessive mind, into a vexing reminder that Russia had suffered many battlefield disasters but had few victories to boast of since its 2022 assault on Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s last victory – another pyrrhic one costing tens of thousands, perhaps more than 100,000 Russian lives – had been at Bakhmut last year. There, also, Ukrainian forces withdrew to avoid being surrounded in the largely ruined, uninhabitable town.

Putin had become enraged that his repeatedly set deadlines for the capture of Avdiivka and the entire Donetsk region had passed with Ukrainian forces holding onto their positions.

Volodymyr Zelensky is pleading for more arms and ammunition (AP)

Last autumn Russia redoubled efforts to capture Avdiivka, now almost completely reduced to rubble.

Moscow concentrated a huge number of tanks, other armoured vehicles, artillery and deployed tens of thousands of troops, which included large numbers of convicts trading their prison sentences for army service and poorly-trained fresh conscripts lured by promises of high pay or cajoled by threats, and some elite units.

These were hurled against formidable Ukrainian entrenchments and Russian forces fell in droves. But, using the same suicidal, human-wave, frontal-assault tactics that had cost them dearly at Bakhmut, Moscow repeatedly sent its troops charging to their deaths in thousands over the corpses of their fallen comrades.

By the end of last year sources in the Ukrainian military told The Independent they had calculated Avidiivka might fall because of the sheer weight of Moscow’s attacks, which squandered Russian lives but made incremental gains.

Ukraine has a population four times smaller than Russia’s and the numbers meant Ukraine could not win a purely attritional battle. In any case, while Putin and his dictatorial system do not suffer any blowback from their citizens, repressed into silence, about the lives they throw away, Ukrainian society would not tolerate such a gratuitous waste of lives and Kyiv’s commanders have always been more cautious.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had ordered his commanders to make saving the lives of the country’s soldiers an overriding priority.

Although Ukrainian forces had managed to hold Avdiivka against seemingly overwhelming odds for so long the factor that tipped the balance against them was the bitter political imbroglio in the US Congress which has suspended all-important American military supplies.

Ukrainian servicemen near Bakhmut last year (Getty)

That has led to a dramatic reduction of ammunition for the western-supplied artillery which is critical to keeping Russia’s much larger forces at bay along the 600-mile long front lines. Officers at some Ukrainian artillery batteries told The Independent last November they had previously been firing some 5,000 to 6,000 shells daily compared to the Russians’ 10,000.

But the reduction in American supplies meant some units were down to their last two artillery shells and that was the situation around Avdiivka, which prevented Ukrainian artillery firing in support of their comrades in the trenches fighting at close quarters, degrading their ability to repel the mass Russian assaults.

General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukrainian forces defending Avdiivka, said: “In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers, with a 10-to-1 shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution.”

European countries have increased military aid to Ukraine but simply do not have, presently, the capacity to fill the giant hole left by the suspension of American aid.

Last week the US National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, warned the recalcitrant Republican Congress members, blocking aid for Ukraine at the behest of former president and Putin admirer, Donald Trump, that: “Avdiivka is at risk of falling into Russian control,” because of the ammunition shortages.

It is now too late for Avdiivka but unless the US Congressional impasse is swiftly resolved, Ukraine will suffer bigger losses of men and may be forced to retreat from other frontline areas where Russia has also launched the same sort of fierce assaults as at Avdiivka.