It was only a matter of time before Russia entered the ruins of the city of Avdiivka.
Outnumbered and under onslaught every day since October, the city has been on the front lines since the insurgency in the spring of 2014.
The Russians have suffered huge losses in personnel and materiel since the start of their autumn assault on the city, and last December, the United States estimated that Russian forces had suffered more than 13,000 men on the Avdiivka-Novopavlivka axis in just a few weeks.
At first, the Russians attacked the city with heavy armor, but suffered heavy losses, partly due to accurate attacks by Ukrainian drones. Recently, the Russian army changed tactics and sent dozens of small detachments of infantry into the city for close-quarters combat.
The Ukrainian military acknowledged in December that the concentrated strength of the Russian army would eventually prevail. The then Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, said: "The enemy has the ability to concentrate its forces, including artillery and aviation, in one direction or another." They can do it, and in that way, within two or three months, the town will have the same fate as Mutter, who finally fell in the spring.
The deputy commander of Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade, Maxim Zorin, said that they had a 15-to-1 ratio of soldiers to the Russian army, and that the Russians had sent seven brigades totaling about 15,000 people to the battle.
Eventually, the large Russian army and its air superiority made the city's defenses untenable and threatened to encircle the Ukrainian brigades that were still defending it. The new commander-in-chief of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrsky, ordered the withdrawal of troops, and according to the Institute for the Study of War, "the continued marginal pace of Russian advance in and around Avdiivka suggests that Ukrainian forces are currently making a relatively controlled withdrawal from Avdiivka."
Ukraine's retreat to a more favorable line of defense appears to have come at a cost, as Russian forces have laid mines along some routes.
There are already signs that not all Ukrainian units will be able to escape the tightening noose. However, under pressure from the superior forces of the enemy, some Ukrainian servicemen were captured at the final stage of the operation.
Ukrainian forces are under pressure in other areas of the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. The Russians have recently made gradual progress near Maryinka, south of Avdiivka. This has become a terrible war of attrition.
The military in Avdiivka bears similarities with the loss of **Mutter last year, when the Ukrainians held on to parts of the city, inflicting as many ** on the Russian attacking forces as possible, even if they themselves suffered heavy losses.
Zelensky claimed that for every Ukrainian soldier lost in and around Avdiivka, seven Russians were killed.
He also reiterated that Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian defenders were carried out haphazardly and called on Ukraine's allies to "clear the sky." On Friday, a commander in Avdiivka said his troops had suffered 60 airstrikes in the past 24 hours.
Ukraine's bigger problem is that it is defending a 1,000-kilometer front line with chronic shortages of artillery shells and other ammunition as the $60 billion US military aid package has been shelved in Congress since December and Europe is struggling to deliver what it promised.
In addition, Ukraine's forces have been fighting almost non-stop for two years in a row, while Russia has mobilized an additional 300,000 soldiers to increase its numerical superiority.
The Ukrainians are beginning to adapt to a new aggressive defensive posture that will continue to bleed the Russian army. But they will be able to win this battle here and at the front only through incremental changes in technology and further injections of Western equipment.
The arrival of F-16 fighter jets may at least tip the scales, but striking long-range missile systems in the Russian rear is also an urgent need, and many Western** have been cautious about providing such a need.