Fighting has grown increasingly fierce last month at the Zenit air defense base, a mile south of Avdiivka, where a company of Ukrainian soldiers has guarded the city’s southern approach for years.
Russian forces attacked from their flanks, pummeling them from all sides with tanks, artillery and mortars, destroying their defenses and injuring men.
“We work hard every day to repel enemy attacks,” said Viktor Biliak, a 26-year-old senior soldier with the 110th Mechanized Brigade who has been defending the base for 620 days. “All the fortifications were destroyed and it was impossible to build new ones.”
Soldiers interviewed after the retreat described an uneven four-month battle in which relentless attacks from Russian artillery and glide bombs destroyed buildings and blasted through deep concrete bunkers. With the Ukrainians taking heavy casualties and the Russians attacking the city increasingly outnumbered, the Russians achieved breakthroughs at two strategic points and quickly deployed armed personnel in the area.
The city’s fall in mid-February was brutal and swift, taking place in less than a week.
For two weeks, soldiers warned they could be overrun by Russian forces, but commanders told them to hold their ground, a delay that led to casualties, said Biliak, the soldier. Some units collapsed under Russian fire. One company retreated to its Zenith base after losing ground.
The final retreat was dangerous and costly as Russian artillery fired continuously on the road out of the city. Many soldiers died on the way.
Saman, 36, commander of the 25th Independent Battalion, who was monitoring his troops from a command post, said heavy Russian air strikes had caused the greatest damage in the city center. Some brigades lost contact with their troops under the bombardment. A group retreated to a house and were killed by a glide bomb, Saman said. For security reasons, Saman, like others interviewed, identified himself by a call sign.
The capture of Avdivka is the Russians’ most significant gain in nine months and a blow to Ukrainian forces struggling with ammunition and personnel shortages.
As Ukrainian soldiers regrouped in villages and training grounds after retreating from Avdievka, they left no doubt as to why they had lost the city, a stronghold on the Eastern Front that has been hit by Russian attacks for a decade. The goal.
“It’s because of a lack of ammunition,” Sharman said. In October, his battalion was deployed to Avdievka when the Russians began a new offensive against the city. “no problem.”
He said that if Ukrainian forces had enough artillery, they could take control of the city by hitting Russian supplies and logistics behind the lines and preventing reinforcements from entering.
Last spring, Roman, a 48-year-old soldier in the Territorial Defense Forces, spent three months with his unit in Avdiivka. “It’s difficult,” he said. “We have no support.” The unit was sent in February to help defend the Avdievka coking plant, a Ukrainian army headquarters on the edge of the city.
He choked up as he described the casualties his troops suffered during the war. “We have 20 people in the unit and there are eight left,” he said. He added that of his company’s 86 men, only 28 remained. There are no official statistics on Ukrainian casualties in Avdievka, but commanders say hundreds may have been killed in the city’s fall.
Ukrainian officials said Russian casualties were much higher as their repeated attacks were met with Ukrainian artillery fire and drone strikes, leaving fields and trenches strewn with corpses and damaged armor.
But the Russian troops kept coming and successfully approached the edge of the city from the north and south. By the end of January, they were ready to infiltrate residential areas. They broke out at two important points, crossing railway lines from the northeast and tunneling through sewers in the south, attacking Ukrainian positions from the rear.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Soldier Bialjak.
Soldiers at the Zenith base began urging commanders to request a withdrawal, he said. They were told to wait.
Russia drops as many as 80 to 100 glide bombs (abbreviated KAB) into the city every day. A fighter jet would drop four half-ton bombs that would explode in rapid succession, blasting huge craters in the earth or leveling multi-story concrete buildings.
“When the KAB collapses, you wonder if the concrete is going to fall on you and they can’t dig you out,” said a 42-year-old soldier whose callname was Patrick. “We saw that happen.”
Russian drones continue to hover over the roads. One day, a 23-year-old military doctor whose call sign was Malyi was rushing out of the city with an injured soldier when a Russian drone was chasing him. Miraculously, the drone hit the car’s rear spare tire and bounced back. Marley and his injured passenger survived.
“This is a matter of life and death,” he said.
By early February, Russian forces were close to surrounding the city and cutting off the last two roads. On February 9, 36-year-old Dmytro, commander of the military intelligence unit Stugna, was ordered to go to Avdievka to help repel Russian infiltration and ensure access during the withdrawal Safety on the city’s main roads.
The unit joined the 3rd Commando Brigade, which had arrived a week earlier, but found that Russian forces had spread through the neighborhood so quickly that their plans were obsolete before they could be used. “Things are changing all the time,” Demytro said.
Within days of Stugner’s arrival on February 13, Russian troops seized the main road into the city and began extending a second road south along the tree line, the final route out of the city. Ukrainian soldiers have braved heavy fire to deliver supplies and evacuate the wounded, but if the Russians took control of the road, thousands would be trapped.
The people of the almost surrounded Zenith Air Force Base finally received the order to evacuate. The first group was unsuccessful and was hit by artillery fire. The large army set off on the night of February 15, breaking into small groups and crossing the fields in the dark. Soldier Biliak led one group, but he said they came under fire and he never saw anyone else.
At dawn, dozens of men regrouped in front of some huts on the edge of the city. The sky was foggy, which meant there were no drones flying, and although they had no orders, they continued to retreat towards the only road.
Dmytro said the Russians tried to seize control of the tree line six times, but his troops repelled them each time with artillery. But ultimately the Ukrainians could not stop the influx of Russians.
He could send four to eight men as reinforcements, but he said the Russians sent 30 troops at a time. “To stop a group of 30 people, you need 50 rounds,” he said. “You need five rounds to correct the fire, and we can only use 10 rounds.”
Still, Stugna held the road at two intersections, and Ukrainian troops steadily withdrew from the city, mostly by vehicle and on foot, mostly under cover of darkness. In the early hours of February 16, soldier Biliak boarded an armored vehicle with other wounded men. The next day, the last of Zenith’s troops came out.
But Ukrainian officials later said they left behind six men – five wounded and an aide – who were captured and killed by Russian troops. “There are six. We are the ones who stayed. We should remember that there are three times as many bodies lying on the road,” said soldier Biliak.
The road ran through fields and was under constant fire. “You can still drive through, but most people come out on foot,” Demytro said.
Before dusk on February 17, the 25th Independent Battalion made its final departure from the chemical plant and headed north on foot.
“We only have 21 people left to guard the entire factory,” said Staff, 36, a tall soldier wearing an ill-fitting helmet. “They came from three directions,” he said. “They’re within gun range,” another soldier said. “They were close enough to throw grenades.”
The next day, on the seventh try, the Russians overran the tree line and cut off the lower road, Dmytro said. “If it had been a day earlier,” he said, “it would have been chaos.”
Marc Santora contributed reporting from the Donetsk region and Kiev, Ukraine.