The residents of Avdiivka, the majority of whom have been evacuated, are now markedly fewer – with a remainder of over 1,500 civilians still left behind. A recent brutal onslaught by Russia has devastated 118 Ukrainian towns and settlements within the span of 24 hours – a staggering figure unparalleled by any other day this year, as outlined by the Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. The attack swept through 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions, resulting in casualties and injuries.
Many of the affected communities lay adjacent to the front lines in Ukraine’s eastern and southern territories. For weeks on end, Russia has intensely focused its military firepower on Avdiivka – a significant strategic hotspot in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
“The image of Avdiivka is being relentlessly torn apart, destroyed. In a single day alone, there have been more than 40 substantial artillery barrages against the local community,” says Vitaliy Barabash, a community leader, who also reveals that two innocent individuals have lost their lives. He has raised alarms that Russia is amassing forces to untwine a third wave of its offensive.
Ukraine contends that Russia continues to surge reinforcements into the region, with an underlying intent to surround and capture Avdiivka. Tuesday witnessed Ukraine’s armed forces successfully repel as many as twenty attacks concentrated on Avdiivka, according to the general staff of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Simultaneously, Russia has bolstered its offensive on Kupyansk located in the northeastern Kharkiv region and has made attempts to deter Ukrainian forces from reclaiming territory within Bakhmut. Assaults on non-frontline areas were also reported, such as an apartment block, markets, and a drug store in Nikopol, a southern city along the Dnipro riverbank, as well as in Kremenchuk where a defunct oil refinery caught fire due to Russian drones.
This Poltava-based refinery has been targeted multiple times by Russia and was attacked during the early dawn hours of Wednesday. The Kremenchuk refinery held the distinction of being Ukraine’s largest until Russian aggressions rendered it non-operational weeks into the invasion.
In the face of these surging odds, Ukraine’s progress in pushing back the Russian forces and reclaiming occupied territories in the south and east has been painstakingly slow. This situation is raising anxieties in the West about potential fatigue in the war effort. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded this slow-paced progress while repeatedly calling upon Ukraine’s allies to urgently furnish more sophisticated weaponry and preserve their unity.
As the conflict persists, warnings from Ukraine’s top military commander Zaluzhny suggest that the war is transitioning towards a “positional” or static phase. This situation, he argues in an Economist column, would only serve Russia’s interests as it allows them to recover and rebuild military might. He contends that in terms of weapons, equipment, and ammunition, Russia maintains an edge, thus necessitating Ukraine’s allies to supply fighter jets, drones, modern electronic warfare technology, and mine-breaching equipment among others.
Meanwhile, one of Ukrane’s allies, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, candidly expressed her growing weariness of the situation during a laughable hoax call with two notorious Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus. She conveyed the desire to find a way out of the prevalent situation, acknowledging the slow but enduring pushback of Ukrainian forces against the onslaught. She further admitted the unchanged “destiny of the conflict,” despite the counter-offensive launched by Ukraine.
