WHY RUSSIAN FORCES ARE TARGETING AVDIIVKA
On October 9, russia unleashed an all-out offensive on Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold in the east that Ukraine has been defending since 2014. The invader’s goal? Military analysts, including the Institute for the Study of War (see map above), have identified moscow’s objective as to take control of the entire Donetsk Oblast, one of the five Ukrainian provinces it now occupies and claims to have annexed.
According to all reports, russia’s scheme has thus far been a complete military failure. On October 19 alone, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, russia sacrificed 1,380 personnel, 55 tanks and 120 armored fighting vehicles to its mission, record numbers since the Ukrainian military began releasing official figures in March 2022. Analysts at the ISW are comparing russia’s obsessive focus on Avdiivka to last year’s fall offensive in Bakhmut and warn that the obsessive intensity of this current attack may be a sign of the kremlin’s strategy for the winter to come.
Avdiivka has been under attack for almost a decade now. “...nine years into the Donbas war, the compact city just 10 kilometers from the center of occupied Donetsk is barely holding on,” wrote Francis Farrell for the Kyiv Independent in an article published in March 2023, a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the lengths to which russia will go to occupy Ukrainian territory.
In another article by Farrell published by The Kyiv Independent on October, 25, the newspaper shares a video shared by the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine documents the destruction of Russian armored personnel vehicles moving toward Avdiivka on Oct. 20, 2023. In the video, the mechanized equipment is slowly moving through a large open field littered with recently destroyed russian tanks and vehicles: The video drives home the kremlin’s clear disregard for its soldiers lives and maniacal obsession with occupation at all costs.
Military analysts, including the Institute for the Study of War, believe moscow’s objective is to take control of the entire Donetsk Oblast, one of five Ukrainian provinces it claims to have annexed. According to all reports, russia’s scheme has thus far been a complete military failure. On October 19 alone, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, russia sacrificed 1,380 personnel, 55 tanks and 120 armored fighting vehicles to its mission, record numbers since the Ukrainian military began releasing official figures in March 2022.
According to a recent Atlantic Council UkraineAlert, “Britain’s Ministry of Defense reported on October 22 that Russian assaults around Avdiivka had resulted in a “90 percent increase in Russian casualties.” The Kyiv Post’s Senior Defense Correspondent Stefan Korshak rated the Russian offensive as a major setback for the kremlin. “The last 2-3 weeks of fighting at Avdiivka are a serious battlefield defeat and probably among the worst suffered by the Russians in the entire war since they tried to force crossings on the Siviersky Donets River in May 2022.”
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; The Kyiv Independent; the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert; The Telegraph’s “Ukraine: The Latest” podcast.
