Avdeyevka’s Liberation Shows Ukrainian Front ‘Has Begun to Crack’
16:39 GMT 18.02.2024 (Updated: 18:45 GMT 18.02.2024)
© Sputnik / Sergey Averin
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Russian forces entered the heart of the hardened, heavily fortified Donetsk suburb of Avdeyevka on Friday, with the Defense Ministry announcing Sunday that Russian troops had advanced over 8.5 kilometers deep into Ukrainian positions behind the front. What are the strategic implications of Avdeyevka’s liberation?
The Russian military breached seemingly uncrackable defensive lines in Avdeyevka this week, breaking through kilometers-worth of fortifications and hardened structures built up by Ukraine’s NATO-backed forces from 2015 onward. The collapse of Ukraine’s defensive positions in the settlement, situated just 5 km from the city of Donetsk proper, should help the 600,000+ residents of that embattled Donbass city sleep better at night and make it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to shell them using artillery.
Ukrainian forces began a hasty retreat from Avdeyevka a day before newly-appointed Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky gave the order to do so, with White House national security spokesman John Kirby warning before that that the situation in the city was “critical” for Ukrainian forces and that they were suffering unbearable shortages of ammunition.
The news of Avdeyevka’s loss immediately gave rise to a blame game in Kiev, with Oleg Soskin, an ex-advisor to former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, associating the defeat with Syrsky’s appointment, which he blasted as a “crime against Ukraine.”
The timing of Avdeyevka’s fall to Russia could not have come at a worse time for Zelensky, coming right in the middle of his latest fundraising trip abroad, to the Munich Security Conference, where efforts to get Western countries to continue to funnel billions of dollars more into the Ukrainian black hole was the front and center of discussions.
First Major Settlement to Be Freed Since Artemovsk
Avdeyevka’s liberation has significance for Russia for a number of reasons, says political and military analyst Sergey Poletaev, cofounder of the Vatfor media project.
“This is the first city that we’ve taken since Artemovsk, that is, since May of last year. The city itself is not very large, but it is essentially the last fortified area remaining in the suburbs of Donetsk, which the Ukrainian side has been fortifying since 2014,” Poletaev explained to Sputnik.
Avdeyevka was a key Ukrainian stronghold for shelling Donetsk, the observer added, emphasizing that if Russia manages to stabilize the new front even a few kilometers behind its lines, “the likelihood of Donetsk being shelled will drop; at least cannon artillery will have less opportunity to fire.”
17 February, 02:08 GMT
From here on out, everything will depend “on how big the hole in the front” Russia manages to puncture, with advances threatening to snowball and push Ukrainian forces back rapidly if Kiev proves unable to set up new defensive lines.
“A fairly rapid collapse of defenses has taken place before our eyes,” Poletaev said. “It began on February 10 or so. This was the result of the efforts of the Russian Army and the DPR’s First Army Corps, which joined it and bore the brunt of the fighting in this direction. The operation [around Donetsk] began on October 10, and required a very long time to get going,” with Russian forces “looking for an approach, pressing Ukrainian forces from all sides, and in the end Ukrainian defenses began to crack, with the collapse occurring literally within a few days.”
Avdeyevka’s liberation is an important signal that “the (Ukrainian) front has begun to crack,” Poletaev said. “If you look at the front, it is moving back westwards everywhere.”
Harbinger of Things to Come?
“Because the Russian Army prevailed here, a place where Ukrainian forces had constructed trench lines and significant defensive operation, Avdeyevka, for all of its destruction, shows that the best Ukrainian defenses can and will fall,” Karen Kwiatkowski, a former US Air Force officer and DoD senior analyst, told Sputnik.
Politically, Kwiatkowski says, Avdeyevka’s loss may prove a disaster for the Kiev regime, either pushing it into negotiations (which Zelensky had previously sworn off), or sparking “unpredictable violence of a Zelensky in extremis, with his loyal commander [Syrsky] executing this violence” against anyone that’s deemed disloyal.
For the West, the retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel noted, the defeat in Avdeyevka serves as “embarrassing proof that what Ukraine and our intelligence services have done with Western money and Ukrainian lives has been an exercise in waste, and wasted aggression.”
18 February, 14:55 GMT
Kwiatkowski doesn’t believe that the disaster in the Donbass will nullify Western "support" for Kiev, with Blackrock and other mega corporations perhaps even preferring a “more compact Ukrainian territory” to work with to carry out their plans of turning the Eastern European country into “a modern-day EU colony” of “cheap resources, labor, land and lots of ‘rebuilding’ and WEF-style ‘redesign’ on the books.”
“This will be the basis for a Western ‘win’ and a face-saving way to end the active fighting – but unless US and EU attitudes change and NATO is collapsed into a truly defensive alliance, the original problem of a threat at the door for Russians and Russia will remain,” the Pentagon analyst-turned-whistleblower emphasized.
Race to Final Ukrainian Defensive Line in the Donbass
“If we’re talking about the strategic significance [of Avdeyevka’s liberation, ed.], of course, this greatly weakens the position of Ukraine’s Armed Forces in the Donetsk direction,” veteran Russian military expert Ivan Konovalov told Sputnik.
“Moreover, our troops have already reached Chasov Yar. The liberation of Avdeyevka means that soon the arc of Druzhkovka, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk will come under Russian attack. And this, in fact, is the last defensive belt Ukraine’s military has in the context of fortified defenses. That is, our troops are already approaching these areas, and beyond that is territory that’s less heavily fortified,” Konovalov said, emphasizing that the closer Russian forces approach, the more fierce and desperate the fighting will become.
Screengrab of Sputnik map showing Avdeyevka's location in relation to Ukraine's defensive line in the Donbass, with Druzhkovka, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk pictured to the north.
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