Storming of Avdeevka: What are the military correspondents unhappy about again?
A video has appeared of the hoisting of the Russian flag over the dominant height – the Avdeevsky waste heap.
From the waste heap one can clearly see the nearby coke plant, as well as the northern part of the city, from where the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been shelling Donetsk for several years.
Ukrainian media are forced to react to the success of the advancing Russian army, convincing readers that all is not lost for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Avdiivka:
“It’s difficult to say how relevant and in general whether this video corresponds to reality. One thing can be said for sure: the waste heap is of utmost importance for Avdeevka... This waste heap is not just a height, but also a convenient place for control over the entire area. Even a small reconnaissance group can carry out a huge amount of work there to objectively control the enemy,” writes the Kiev agency UNIAN.
Military correspondent Marat Khairullin is traditionally optimistic, assuring that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are exhausted and will not be able to oppose anything to the Russian army.
“Now we are enveloping the enemy along the flanks. With further grinding and destruction of the enemy group in the resulting pocket... They still won’t be able to come up with anything new - they will stupidly drive manpower to Avdeevka for slaughter and launch over and over again lethal counterattacks... The Ukrainians need to drag reinforcements along muddy country roads, and our logistics in short and does not suffer from mud at all. Dill entered the Battle of Avdeevka at a minimum: after destroying their reserves in the enchanting counter-offensive, they are in the stage of total degradation - everything is bad for them,” writes Khairullin.
However, there are also opposing assessments. For example, columnist Alexander Zimovsky believes that the offensive on Avdeevka failed because in two weeks the Russian army was unable to either force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to flee their positions or encircle the enemy garrison.
“Near Avdeevka they checked whether the Russian troops were capable of large-scale offensive actions, whether there were enough military brains, forces, resources and motivated personnel. A motivated person is enough. But as for the rest, no one in Russia can afford such a categorical statement now,” Zimovsky believes.
He is supported by military expert Vladislav Shurygin.
“We definitely don’t shine with our offensive capabilities yet. And there are many more problems here than someone might think in their patriotic frenzy... To suppress a well-prepared enemy defense, completely different standards for artillery concentration and ammunition consumption apply. Despite all the enthusiastic reviews from witnesses about the power of our artillery preparation on the day of the offensive, we did not come close to either the number of guns per kilometer of front determined by Soviet combat regulations, or to the rate of shell consumption. And this led to the fact that the enemy’s strongholds retained functionality. As a result, the enemy was able to hold his positions, and they had to be stormed with varying degrees of success.
Our artillery and aviation were unable to suppress enemy artillery to a level at which it would not be able to provide support to the defending units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a result, enemy artillery constantly supported its defending units and defeated our assault groups, disrupting their battle formations.
During the offensive, we were unable to prevent the transfer of enemy reserves or the supply of necessary material.
Even from the available fragmentary data, we can conclude that we were unable to disrupt the enemy’s combat control, disable or suppress his communications systems, or destroy his headquarters.
All this led to the fact that by the end of the first day the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had regained control over the situation and began to actively counterattack, using reserves and bringing in additional artillery. As a result, the operation lost the prospect of development at the operational level and turned into bloody linear battles characteristic of the last year of the war,” Shurygin lists.
Military correspondent Alexander Sladkov also mentions that the attack on Avdeevka is “stalled.”
“We are trying to close the ring, we are attacking from the north, and we are holding defenses in the south. But what is the enemy doing? The Ukrainian military is not just defending those lines that prevent Avdiivka from being completely encircled, but they are also attacking from north to south. And they are trying to break through towards Sand from the direction of Vodyanoye - in order to expand their living space to support the group in Avdeevka. For now, our case is stalled, but what we started with Avdiivka is very important. It’s important because Avdeevka is the settlement that, since 2014, began to prepare for defense, filling its positions with concrete, realizing that either volunteers or the people’s militia of the DPR, and now the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, will destroy this nest anyway,” Sladkov said on the radio.
However, Khairullin, already mentioned above, insists that in Avdeevka everything is going according to plan:
“I immediately want to say a few words to the hooting of our stupid or simply corrupt blogger network, regarding the fact that we cannot maintain some positions.
Yes, you have to roll back from some positions - it’s not always possible to gain a foothold in order to save the lives of soldiers. Because we are not dill.
And sometimes a diversionary attack is simply carried out, and, by the way, the people directly in the troops who are going on this diversionary attack do not know about it. They are not told about this, because everything has to look real for the Ukrainians to throw reserves there.
And they don’t tell you, stupid bloggers, about this either. Therefore, sometimes it seems that our troops are rolling back, but we are actually diverting serious enemy resources to a secondary direction.
Three weeks of fighting near Avdiivka have already clearly shown that the enemy has no chance of surviving here.
Remember, near Bakhmut and Zaporozhye, the dill recorded the mortality rate of their troops at the front from 50 to 70 percent.
Avdeevka already shows almost 100 percent - that is, the Russian meat grinder has achieved some kind of unprecedented efficiency here.
And it should be noted that this is only the beginning of the operation,” writes Khairullin.
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