Ukraine ordered a full withdrawal from the decimated city of Avdiivka before dawn on Saturday, abandoning a position that had been a military stronghold for nearly a decade in the face of devastating Russian attacks.
“Due to the operational situation around Avdiivka, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines in order to avoid encirclement and protect the life and health of soldiers,” said General Oleksandr Syrsky, the top military officer Ukraine's commander said in a statement released overnight.
The fall of Avdiivka, a city that once housed about 30,000 people but is now a smoking ruin, is the first major success achieved by Russian forces since May last year. After repelling a Ukrainian counteroffensive over the summer and fall, Russian forces in recent weeks have pushed the attack along nearly the entire length of the 600-mile front.
Saturday's Ukrainian withdrawal follows a bloody finale that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the two-year war. Relying on its personnel and military superiority, Russia bombarded the city with airstrikes and ground attacks, although its fighters suffered a staggering number of casualties.
Superior Ukrainian forces began withdrawing from positions in the southern part of the city on Wednesday and have since been engaged in a desperate battle to avoid being encircled inside the city as Russian forces advanced from multiple directions. When Russian bombers bombed Avdiivka, Ukraine said its forces targeted and shot down three Russian warplanes.
Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Ukraine's armed forces in the south, said there was no choice but to withdraw given Russia's firepower advantage and the number of soldiers Russia was willing to send into battle.
“In a situation where the enemy, under constant fire, is attacking the bodies of its own soldiers with a margin of 10 to 1, this is the only correct solution,” he said in a statement.
The commander said there were casualties for the Ukrainians and “at the final stage of the operation, some Ukrainian soldiers were captured under pressure from the enemy's superior forces.”
Even if Ukrainian lines behind Avdiivka stabilize, the city's fall under Russian control will allow Moscow's military to move its troops and equipment more efficiently as it advances in other directions.
“Avdiivka is a very important base in the Ukrainian defense system” because it protects Pokrovsk, about 30 miles northwest, a logistical hub of the Ukrainian army, Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an interview.
“Taking control of Avdiivka could create an opportunity for Russia,” he said.
But he added that Russian forces lacked large troop and equipment reserves and were unlikely to be able to quickly advance further west of Avdiivka and turn this week's success into a major victory.
Soldiers contacted by phone on Friday who asked not to be named given the ongoing military action described a harrowing attempt to flee the city. They told of how they raced past destroyed buildings as shells thundered from everywhere and Russians advanced from various directions.
“In one of the sectors of the city, fighters from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade are completely surrounded, but they are trying to break through and they succeed,” Maj. Rodion Kudryashov, deputy commander of the assault brigade, said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
Some privately expressed concern in interviews that the call to withdraw had come too late or posted graphic accounts on social media of their dangerous and chaotic withdrawal.
Viktor Biliak of the 110th Brigade, which has defended the city for two years, described his evacuation of the garrison known as Zenit in a southern part of the city on Thursday.
Mr. Biliak, who uses the call sign Hentai, said his unit had no time for an orderly withdrawal – neither for evacuating weapons and equipment nor for burning papers and laying mines to attack Russian troops.
Ten men made a failed attempt to escape on Wednesday evening, he said. They had to fight their way forward in a firefight, but then came under artillery fire.
“Only three wounded made it back,” Hentai wrote on Instagram. He helped rescue one of the wounded the next morning, he said, a dangerous move in daylight that cost the unit four more wounded, including himself.
Troops made another attempt on Thursday evening and those seriously injured were told to wait for an armored vehicle to pick them up.
“Groups left, one after another,” Hentai wrote. Since he was still able to walk, he decided not to wait for the evacuation vehicle and led a group out.
“There was no visibility outside. It was simply about survival. A kilometer across the field,” he wrote. “A bunch of blind cats led by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.”
The evacuation vehicle never came to pick up the wounded, he said. The last group left the bunker and he heard a wounded soldier radio asking for the evacuation vehicle. The commander replied that no vehicle was coming and that they should leave the wounded behind.
“He didn’t know he was talking to a wounded man,” Hentai wrote. “This dialogue on the radio hurt us to the core.”
His and other reports could not be independently confirmed, but it is known that the soldiers quoted in this article are members of the Ukrainian military and have a public presence on social media, and the locations of the landscapes shown in videos were confirmed by The as being in Avdiivka located confirmed New York Times.
As the battle for Avdiivka intensified, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area were forced to ration ammunition, soldiers said. White House officials echoed similar allegations, claiming that the failure to pass a renewed $60 billion military aid package in Congress directly undermines the Ukrainians' fight on the ground.
The Ukrainian government is also struggling to recruit and mobilize soldiers to replenish its weakened ranks after two years of often brutal fighting.
Avdiivka and surrounding communities have been on the front lines since Russian-backed militants seized territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014. But in October the Russians increased their efforts to take the city and launched large-scale attacks to largely encircle the area.
According to the Ukrainian military and British and American officials, these attempts largely failed and resulted in Russia's worst losses of the war: tens of thousands of its soldiers were killed and wounded.
At the beginning of the year, the Russians managed to enter the city of Avdiivka, after which Ukrainian losses increased significantly. At the same time, Russia increased its bombardment of the city and attempted to smash the heavily fortified Ukrainian defenses.
As the situation grew worse, military analysts inside and outside Ukraine feared that the leadership would repeat what many saw as a past mistake: holding out after it was clear that hope was lost and expending personnel and weapons unnecessarily.
The withdrawal from Avdiivka was still underway on Saturday morning under devastating Russian bombardment. The Ukrainian military command said the withdrawal from the southern part of the city occurred with “minor losses.”
But soldiers are stationed videos on social media offered a glimpse of how dangerous the movement in the area had become. In one video, several Ukrainian soldiers ride on an armored vehicle just half a mile from the Avdiivka coking plant on the city's northwestern edge, a landmark.
They drive past the “Avdiivka is Ukraine” sign at the city entrance, which became famous when President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a selfie video from there in December. Seconds later, the soldiers ducked and grimaced as shells landed just meters away, sending up clouds of dust and dirt.
On Friday, the commander of the 2nd Mechanized Battalion of the Third Assault Brigade said the Russians had used incendiary munitions Igniting tanks in which hazardous fuel is stored in the coking plant.
“When burned, this toxic substance has extremely serious consequences for the health and even lives of our fighters,” he said in a statement. The wind sent toxic black clouds of smog over the city and penetrated the power plant that had long served as a base for Ukrainians against Russian advances.
It was unclear early Saturday whether the Ukrainian troops entrenched in the plant had also withdrawn.
Volodymyr Furayev, a soldier stationed at the sprawling Soviet-era industrial complex, said his unit had been ordered to evacuate.
“Leaving the coking plant,” Mr. Furayev said in a post on TikTok. “Everything is targeted. Hard to know where we're going. Hello to everyone who knows me. I don’t know if we’ll make it.”
Oleksandr Chubko reported from Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Malachy Browne reported from Limerick, Ireland.