There was no other Bakhmut. The Ukrainian army withdrew from Avdiyivka, the eastern Ukrainian city, on Friday night to save further casualties among its soldiers, thereby granting Russia its most symbolic and important victory after the failure of the counteroffensive launched by Kyiv. during the summer.
Avdiyivka is a ghost town. It was an industrial city of 34,000 inhabitants, but now there are less than a thousand. Its military value is significant. Its control by Kyiv made it easier for Ukrainian artillery to bombard the city of Donetsk, one of the urban centers controlled by the Russians and the capital of the separatist region for ten years. From now on, the inhabitants of this city will be able to breathe a little easier. Its conquest will also allow Russia to attack other cities in the Donbass.
The value of Avdíyivka is also symbolic. It is a city on which the Russian army (with commanders very little concerned about the wear and tear of their troops) has launched waves of soldiers since October to conquer it on a date as important as this, on the eve of the two-year anniversary. of the start of the war.
Avdiyivka briefly fell in July 2014 into the hands of pro-Russian separatists led by Moscow, but returned to Ukrainian control and had remained so for years, despite its proximity to Donetsk.
The Ukrainian commanders made the decision to withdraw after verifying their numerical inferiority and that they do not have enough ammunition to prevent carnage (those familiar with the situation on the ground point out that the difference between Russians and Ukrainians in weapons is five to one).
It was “a fair decision” to “save as many lives as possible,” declared President Volodymyr Zelensky in the corridors of the Munich Conference on Saturday. “To avoid being surrounded, it has been decided to fall back on new lines. This does not mean that we have retreated a few kilometers and that Russia has captured something, they have not captured anything,” the Ukrainian said, visibly upset.
“In a situation where the enemy advances marching on the corpses of its own soldiers and with ten times more shells [...], it is the only possible good decision,” the commander of the Ukrainian army wrote in a Telegram message. in the area, Olexánder Tarnavski, on Friday night.
The withdrawal of this city from eastern Ukraine is the first major decision of the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Olexander Sirsky, after he was appointed on February 8 to replace Valeri Zaluzhni. And it is a relevant decision.
Sirski has a reputation for being tough. Unlike his predecessor, he is not a popular man among the soldiers. It cannot be said that the human factor is important when making strategic decisions. For this reason, the first thing Sirski did as soon as he took office was to send a refresher unit from Kyiv to Avdiyivka. Everything suggested that the Ukrainian army was going to repeat the Numantine defense (and ultimately useless and very costly in casualties) of Bakhmut. That must also have been Zelensky's wish.
But reality has advised withdrawal. That and the vox populi opinion among the soldiers and the population of the capital itself, who consider that Bakhmut was not a good deal for the Ukrainians. Perhaps he kept the Russian troops entertained and caused them many casualties. But Kyiv lost some of its best troops in that battle, which could not later be used in the frustrated counteroffensive in July 2023.
Bakhmut was conquered in May 2023 after ten months of fighting and at the cost of thousands of dead and wounded.
“I have decided to withdraw our units from the city and start defending ourselves from more favorable lines,” Sirski wrote on Facebook. “Our soldiers have fulfilled their military duties with dignity and have done everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units and inflict significant losses on the enemy,” he continued.
Before making the abandonment of the city official, General Tarnavski acknowledged that “several Ukrainian soldiers” had been “captured” by the Russians, who were much superior in “artillery and aviation personnel.”
A senior military commander who wanted to remain anonymous told the AFP agency that “it was the good decision, we had no weapons or artillery and if we do not save the lives of our soldiers, soon we will not have people to fight with on the front.” ”.
However, the soldiers' messages on the networks indicate otherwise. They point out that the decision could have been made much earlier and this would have prevented the loss of more men. There has also been talk on the networks about the chaos of the last few hours in the Ukrainian army.
The fall of Avdíyivka came at a time when President Zelensky was touring the two major European capitals (Paris and Berlin) to try to strengthen European support for the war.
In Munich, Zelensky could feel the warmth of the words of senior European and American leaders. However, its worst problem is on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States, where Republicans in Congress have blocked military aid to Ukraine in a decision to which Donald Trump is no stranger. The former president considers that the unlocking of this aid means a victory for Joe Biden in the race they are fighting for the White House.
Military experts have pointed out that what happened in Avdíyivka is a first symptom of the lack of weapons on the part of the Ukrainian army. They also point out that when the effects of the lack of weapons are felt on other war fronts, particularly in the Kharkiv area, it will be too late to reverse the course of the war.
