The Ukrainian military said on Monday that Russia intensified aerial bombardments and attempted to advance with ground troops, Reuters reported.
Officials claimed that Russian forces suffered heavy losses around the city, with Ukrainian troops repelling Russian attacks on other parts of the 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front line.
Russia focused its attention on eastern Ukraine, and launched an offensive in mid-October to seize Avdiivka located 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city of Donetsk. Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun stated that Ukrainian forces had repelled eight attacks on the city in the past 24 hours.
“The enemy is also bringing in more and more infantry. But when they tried to deploy armoured vehicles the day before yesterday two tanks and 14 other vehicles were burned out.”
The head of Avdiivka’s military administration, Vitaly Barabash, stated that not a single building survived in the city, as just over 1,500 of the pre-war population of 32,000 remained in the city and the evacuation continued.
Quite simply, Avdiivka and its strategic position is geographically located on heights and you can see Donetsk…from here. And that’s what they need it.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that its forces repelled 15 Russian attacks near Maryinka, east of Avdiivka, as well as 11 attacks near Bakhmut in the northeast and six near Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine.
According to Russian sources, Moscow forces repelled five attempts by the Ukrainian army to advance to villages outside Bakhmut.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny claimed to have discussed the “hottest sectors” of the front line with Charles Brown, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Zaluzhny announced this month that the war was entering a phase of attrition, forcing President Volodymyr Zelensky to deny any suggestion that the conflict was moving toward a stalemate.
