A THOUSAND DAYS OF WAR || It was the most violent battle since the fall of Bakhmut. For months, the Ukrainian military held its positions under one of the largest bombing campaigns of the Russian invasion. But they ended up betrayed by a sewage pipe
The actions that took place on the morning of that day turned the public’s horrified gaze towards the Middle East. Hamas had launched a surprise offensive against southern Israel, taking the lives of hundreds of civilians and soldiers and kidnapping 247 people. At the same time, but with less attention, another military operation, much bloodier, had begun. Their objective was to capture, once and for all, the fortress city of Avdiivka, the “gateway” to the conquest of Donbass. What followed was one of the fiercest battles of the war in Ukraine, where a sewage system outwitted the defenders and plunged Russia into a period of rapid territorial gains.
Moments before the attack, Russia managed to do the unthinkable. For weeks, the Russian armed forces were able to secretly accumulate a significant amount of vehicles, ammunition and soldiers in the city of Donetsk, in a conflict in which technology allows each side to see all enemy movements in real time. The army, led by General Andrey Mordvichev, was preparing to launch its most ambitious offensive since the fall of Bakhmut, against a location that had defensive positions prepared since 2015.
According to a British intelligence report made public, in the early hours of October 10, Russia launched “multiple armored battalions” against the city’s flanks, in an attempt to surround it. For ten days, the Russians tried unsuccessfully to overwhelm the Ukrainian first line of defense, but a deadly combination of mines, drones and mortars left the fields around Avdiivka in a dystopian landscape, full of craters, remains of armored vehicles and corpses. of Russian soldiers.
“At sunrise, the first rays hit our eyes. The enemy used this to attack us while we were blind”, recalled a Ukrainian soldier from the 2nd mechanized battalion of the Presidential Brigade, codenamed “Texas”, adding that, as the Ukrainians occupied the highest terrain positions, a large number of Russian soldiers who advanced against their positions lost their lives in the early hours.
Images began to appear on social media that demonstrate the scale of Russian losses. Dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers are hit by a deadly combination of artillery, anti-tank missiles and mines. In the first 24 hours alone, 36 Russian tanks were completely destroyed. The number of soldiers who lost their lives on the first day of the offensive is not possible to determine.
But Russia had a plan and stuck to it. On the ground the pressure continued without any interruption. The bombardments from 152mm howitzers gave no respite and made it increasingly difficult for Ukrainian soldiers in the first line of defense to come to the surface to fight their opponents. The vast network of bunkers built in and around the city suggested that this offensive, like others in the past, was destined to fail. Whenever the Russians tried to advance, the Ukrainians responded with a deadly load of cluster bombs, which transform a bomb into dozens of smaller explosives that scatter shrapnel over a large area.
In just a few days, hundreds of soldiers lost their lives trying to cross the dense minefields that surround the city’s outskirts. The columns of armored vehicles that escaped the mines and anti-tank weapons had a difficult obstacle in the sky: an army of drones. On the few occasions when they managed to overcome all these barriers, the Russian military came across fortified positions, which were very difficult to conquer.
But Russia was about to launch one of its most deadly weapons onto the battlefield: glide bombs. The KAB-500, as it is known for carrying 500 kilos of explosives, is the transformation of a conventional bomb, which in the past was dropped just above the target, into a “smart bomb”. The Russian army adapts these bombs by integrating small wings and a mechanism to guide them via GPS, ensuring that these bombs can be dropped more than 60 kilometers from the target to hit it with great precision. The result was devastating and Russian aviation spared no effort.
At the same time Ukraine was facing severe material difficulties. At the end of the summer, their counteroffensive – which mobilized at least twelve brigades – failed. Shortly afterwards, in late September, a political war in the House of Representatives between Democrats and Republicans led to the $65 billion military aid package proposed by the Biden administration being repeatedly delayed. It was necessary to wait until April 24th for the document to be approved. Ukrainian forces, which largely depend on the arrival of this weaponry, began to experience a lack of ammunition in October, creating the perfect conditions for the Russian attack.
After the failure of the first few days, everything indicated that Russia was preparing to retreat and reorganize its forces. But Russian leaders had other plans: they increased the intensity of attacks and deployed even more assets to the region. The redoubled Russian effort found some success in the northern region, even managing to penetrate the city’s first residential blocks. But it was to the south that the main success came. Using tunnel construction, Russian forces were able to penetrate an old sewage system that was not being used. After weeks of work, the Russian military managed to infiltrate around 150 special forces soldiers two kilometers behind Ukrainian lines.
At the same time, dozens of Soviet buildings in the city were bombed with increasing intensity, losing their usefulness to the defenders. The situation was increasingly complicated for Ukrainian men. On February 9, 2024, when the situation was increasingly precarious, Volodymyr Zelensky made the decision to remove the popular general Valerii Zaluzhnyi by Oleksandr Syrskyi. The measure was not popular among soldiers. Valerii Zaluzhnyi was younger and more popular among his men. Syrskyi carried with him the reputation of being “a butcher” due to Bakhmut’s close defense, which earned him the nickname “General 200” (a reference to the Soviet code “Cargo 200” used by the military to designate someone killed in action).
The days that followed were intense. Russian aviation did not give rest and, unlike the first days when inexperienced military units were launched into the attack, Russia now launched its best soldiers who faced the Ukrainian forces in violent house-to-house combat. The situation was becoming progressively unsustainable. No better news came from the flanks. Defending what was left of the city was becoming increasingly expensive and Syrskyi was running out of chances and gave the order to withdraw. The last fighters abandoned Avdiivka on February 17, after 131 days of fierce fighting.
The conquest of this Ukrainian defensive bastion was more than just a doozy for the Ukrainian military. This offensive smashed a hole in the Ukrainian front. In practice, the city served as a “shield” for the city of Pokrovsk, 48 kilometers away, which served as the Ukrainian army’s logistical center for the entire Donbass region. The days following Avdiivka’s fall were one of chaos and instability. The Ukrainian army demonstrated that it did not have any alternative plan to defend the city, choosing not to build defensive lines in the rear. This fact and the wear and tear of the Ukrainian army, which also suffered from a lack of ammunition, led Russia to secure its biggest territorial gains since the beginning of the conflict, getting a little closer to its main objective: the conquest of the Donbas region. .
