{"id":281935,"date":"2024-02-17T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T07:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281935"},"modified":"2024-02-18T09:10:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T09:10:57","slug":"ukrainian-forces-withdraw-from-avdiivka-to-avoid-encirclement-army-chief-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=281935","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian forces withdraw from Avdiivka to avoid encirclement, army chief says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shaun Walker \u2013 The Guardian Feb 17, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the eastern city of Avdiivka to avoid encirclement, army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said, marking the biggest change on the frontlines since Russian forces captured Bakhmut<\/a> in May last year.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post on Saturday, the recently appointed Syrskyi said he had acted to \u201cpreserve the lives and health of servicemen\u201d, stabilise the situation and move troops to more favourable defence lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, [and] inflicted significant losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment,\u201d he said. \u201cThe life of military personnel is [of] the highest value.\u201d<\/p>\n

A day earlier, the Ukrainian commander responsible for forces in the south-east of the country had said Kyiv\u2019s forces had withdrawn from some positions in the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew positions have been prepared and powerful fortifications continue to be prepared, taking into account all possible scenarios,\u201d Oleksandr Tarnavskiy said in a statement on social media on Friday.<\/p>\n

In a Saturday statement issued just after Syrskyi\u2019s he added, \u201cIn a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a ten-to-one shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this [withdrawal] is the only correct solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the two-year mark of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion approaches, Ukrainian troops are under pressure along the frontline, with depleted and exhausted ranks and a shortage of artillery shells that has been exacerbated by the stalling of a large US funding package<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president, Joe Biden, had warned on Thursday that Avdiivka risked falling to Russian forces because of ammunition shortages following months of Republican congressional opposition to the aid package.<\/p>\n

Avdiivka has been pounded by the Russians for months, but it is only in recent weeks that they have been able to make significant breakthroughs, with small groups of advance troops making it into the city itself.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the eastern city of Avdiivka to avoid encirclement, army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said, marking the biggest change on the frontlines since Russian forces captured Bakhmut<\/a> in May last year.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post on Saturday, the recently appointed Syrskyi said he had acted to \u201cpreserve the lives and health of servicemen\u201d, stabilise the situation and move troops to more favourable defence lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, [and] inflicted significant losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment,\u201d he said. \u201cThe life of military personnel is [of] the highest value.\u201d<\/p>\n

A day earlier, the Ukrainian commander responsible for forces in the south-east of the country had said Kyiv\u2019s forces had withdrawn from some positions in the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew positions have been prepared and powerful fortifications continue to be prepared, taking into account all possible scenarios,\u201d Oleksandr Tarnavskiy said in a statement on social media on Friday.<\/p>\n

In a Saturday statement issued just after Syrskyi\u2019s he added, \u201cIn a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a ten-to-one shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this [withdrawal] is the only correct solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the two-year mark of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion approaches, Ukrainian troops are under pressure along the frontline, with depleted and exhausted ranks and a shortage of artillery shells that has been exacerbated by the stalling of a large US funding package<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president, Joe Biden, had warned on Thursday that Avdiivka risked falling to Russian forces because of ammunition shortages following months of Republican congressional opposition to the aid package.<\/p>\n

Avdiivka has been pounded by the Russians for months, but it is only in recent weeks that they have been able to make significant breakthroughs, with small groups of advance troops making it into the city itself.<\/p>\n

Syrskyi<\/a>, who was appointed last week in a major military shake-up<\/a>, had sent in reinforcements to aid the defence of Avdiivka, but Tarnavskiy\u2019s announcements had suggested Kyiv might be preparing for a retreat from the city, which was surrounded on three sides by Russian forces.<\/p>\n

The loss of the city nearly two years into Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion may give President Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> a stronger case to make to the west for more urgent military aid as he addresses the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

There was no immediate comment about the withdrawal from the Russian defence ministry, Zelenskiy or the Ukrainian defence minister.<\/p>\n

Taking over the remains of Avdiivka, much of which has been decimated by fighting, would give Russia full control of the area surrounding Donetsk, a large Ukrainian city that was seized by Russian proxy forces in 2014. It would also be a symbolic gain for Vladimir Putin as he prepares to stand in a rubber-stamp election next month that will grant him another six years in office.<\/p>\n

An industrial city once known for its sprawling coke plant, Avdiivka became a Ukrainian military stronghold after the loss of Donetsk in 2014, but has been decimated by the recent fighting. Vitaliy Barabash, Avdiivka\u2019s mayor, said 923 civilians remained in the city, down from a prewar population of about 32,000. Most of them are elderly people who have refused to leave their homes, even as fighting has intensified in recent months, and there is no possibility to evacuate them.<\/p>\n

Fierce battles have been going on around Avdiivka since October. Ukraine\u2019s Third Assault Brigade, which had been deployed around Avdiivka to reinforce Kyiv\u2019s troops, said in a statement on Thursday that the situation in the city was \u201chell\u201d, describing it as \u201cthreatening and unstable\u201d.<\/p>\n

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said in a briefing on Thursday that Avdiivka was at risk of falling under Russian control. \u201cIn very large part, this is happening because the Ukrainian forces on the ground are running out of artillery ammunition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At a forest base near a section of the frontline in Donetsk region, west of Avdiivka, soldiers from a self-propelled artillery unit that forms part of Ukraine\u2019s First Tank Brigade said during a visit on Thursday that their ability to strike the Russians had been cut dramatically since November.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack then, we could fire every half hour, to stop them from relaxing and disrupt their movements, now we have to be very selective, and only fire for defence,\u201d said their commander, who gave his call-sign, Titushko, in accordance with Ukrainian army regulations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot target only one vehicle, we only aim when we see a concentration of hardware,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

With the frontlines largely static in recent months, the capture of Avdiivka would mark Russia\u2019s first major gain since taking Bakhmut last May.<\/p>\n

\u201cAvdiivka is important for them to control the space around Donetsk, you have control of dominant heights there, and they can build logistics corridors to supply a large area of the front,\u201d said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskiy, in an interview in Kyiv earlier this month. \u201cThis is not about symbolism, this is about the operative importance of a particular territory,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Some in Ukraine have suggested that the situation in Avdiivka resembles the fierce fighting during last year\u2019s defence of Bakhmut, during which Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses during an ultimately unsuccessful defence of the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Avdiivka is like Bakhmut, but I worry that Ukraine\u2019s leadership will choose to freight it with political significance, which it need not have, as part of an observed tendency to not cede ground anywhere no matter the cost or military reality,\u201d said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment thinktank.<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy fired his top army commander<\/a>, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, last week, and replaced him with Syrskyi, the former commander of the land forces, citing a need for a new approach.<\/p>\n

Some Ukrainian soldiers blame Syrskyi for the losses at Bakhmut and expressed concern that more lives may be lost in Avdiivka before the Russian takeover that most believe is inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost likely we will lose it and the only other option is we spend tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives to hold it a bit longer, and then who will replace those people,\u201d said one Ukrainian army officer, who asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Russia on the verge of seizing the entire city of Avdiivka, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, claims that its seizure will only be a \u201csymbolic\u201d victory. Symbolic or not, Russian forces have taken a city that both sides see as key to taking full control of a region that Moscow sees as traditionally part of Russia <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":281936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281935"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282020,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281935\/revisions\/282020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/281936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}