Recently, CCTV reported that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin that he had full control over the city of Avdeyevka. The new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Syrsky, also publicly announced the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Avdeyevka, an important town in the Donetsk region. This means that the Avdeyevka offensive and defensive battle, which lasted for two years, ended with the victory of the Russian army and the defeat of the Ukrainian army.
Since the 2014 coup d'état in Ukraine to the present, there have actually been two fierce battles in Avdeyevka. The first took place in 2017 as a skirmish between Ukrainian forces and ethnic Russian forces in Donetsk. It lasted less than a week.
But this battle showed the importance of Avdeyevka. Although there are only more than 30,000 people in this small coke industry, this small city with coke as its main industry guards the famous M4 highway and is only a few dozen kilometers from the center of Donetsk, where the Ukrainian army regularly shells the city.
The Ukrainian side, of course, will not take such a strategic point lightly. Back in 2016, before the first conflict broke out, the Ukrainian army established fortified positions in the industrial zone east of Avdeyevka. It continued to strengthen in the following years, and by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, it was once again in the spotlight.
Especially after Russia announced that the four eastern regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia, because Avdeyevka is located in the center of Donetsk, if it has been controlled by Ukraine, it will also lose points politically. Therefore, the Russian army has maintained strong military pressure on Avdeyevka, and it is inevitable.
To some extent, the defense of the Ukrainian army in Avdeyevka played quite well. Over the past two years, the militia of eastern Ukraine, with the strong firepower support of the Russian army, has resolutely invested its forces and continuously attacked this key point. However, because the Ukrainian army relied on strong fortifications and artillery support to implement a defensive defense, the progress of the militia and the Russian army in East Ukraine was very slow. According to foreign news reports, in the past two years, the fierce artillery fighting here has hardly stopped. Since March 2022, the Russian army has used Tornado large-caliber rocket artillery to attack Avdeyevka, and the commander of the Azov Regiment died in Avdeyevka on March 25, 2022.
Since July 2022, the militia of East Ukraine has declared a semi-encirclement of Avdeyevka. After that, the Russian army and the East Ukrainian militia captured a surrounding village and town after a while, but the Ukrainian army has been holding out in the city of Avdeyevka.
Sometimes, the Ukrainian army will also fight small-scale counterattacks to repel the attacking Russian troops, or cause certain losses. On the whole, although the Russian army will never give up Avdeyevka, it will not be able to take it.
Since October 2023, the Ukrainian army has been in a constant emergency, saying that it will not be able to hold on because of insufficient troops, ammunition, and supplies. The Russian army used air strikes, artillery strikes, underground blasting, etc., to gradually destroy the defense line of the Ukrainian army. In the end, this military point was finally taken.
In a sense, the reason why the Ukrainian army cannot hold Avdeyevka is directly related to the mutual demolition of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States. Throughout the war, the Ukrainian side complained that there were not enough shells. Before Christmas 2023, after the last US aid funds were used up, the Ukrainian side never received 155mm shells from the United States. Although European countries have pledged military aid in varying amounts, most of them have not quenched their thirst. And the Russian side has quite abundant shells, and the intensity of firepower projection is more than 10 times that of the Ukrainian army. There is no suspense about the outcome of such a battle.
Ukraine has now lost strong foreign aid, the source of troops is almost exhausted, the loss of Avdeyevka is inevitable, and more seriously, it is possible to lose the ability to retreat and build a new line of defense. To put it bluntly, the Ukrainian army is likely to be on the verge of collapse. Even if Ukraine, with the support of NATO, is able to attack the Black Sea Fleet with equipment such as suicide unmanned boats and inflict losses on the Russian army, it will not be able to reverse the defeat on the land battlefield.
The suspense now is whether the Russian army has this strategic intelligence capability to find out the actual situation of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield. If the Ukrainian army is really crumbling, then does the Russian army have the determination and strength to take the opportunity to break through and completely defeat the Ukrainian army in front of it, which will not only make NATO unable to come to Taiwan, but will also effectively prevent its continuous eastward expansion.
If the Russian army is unable to achieve an effective breakthrough in 2024 and the war drags on until 2025 or even longer, then the measures of industrial mobilization, whether in the United States or Europe, will show results. At that time, there will likely be more unpredictable variables on the battlefield in Ukraine.
List of high-quality authors