- Written by Yaroslav Lukiv
- bbc news
image source, RL/Serhii Nuzhinenko/Reuters
Avdiivka was almost completely destroyed after months of intense fighting.
Ukraine has announced it has withdrawn its troops from the main eastern city of Avdiivka, which has been besieged by Russian forces for months.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the decision was taken to save the lives of soldiers.
Russia's Defense Ministry announced Saturday that Russia had “completely captured” the town, with President Vladimir Putin hailing it as an “important victory.”
The drop marks Russia's biggest victory in recent months, with Zelenskiy blaming the West for a slump in arms supplies.
Almost all of Avdiivka's prewar population of over 30,000 people left, and the city itself was almost completely destroyed.
Ukraine is suffering from an ammunition shortage, mainly as a result of political conflicts in the United States, which is its main ammunition supplier.
US President Joe Biden blamed Ukraine's withdrawal from Avdiivka on Congress' inaction on a key foreign aid package that included funding for Ukraine that forced the military to ration ammunition.
In his phone conversation with Zelensky, Mr. Biden reiterated the United States' unwavering support for Ukraine.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Zelenskiy called on Western countries to help Ukraine defeat the “monster” he called Putin.
If the Western world does not stand up to the Russian leader, he has warned that the coming years will be “disastrous” for many countries like Ukraine.
Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
“Don't ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourself why Putin can still continue the war,” Zelenskyy told a news conference.
Avdiivka has been embroiled in heavy fighting for months and has been a battleground town since Russian-backed warplanes took control of large swaths of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014.
The fall of Avdiivka marks the biggest change on the more than 1,000 km (620 miles) long front since Russian forces captured the nearby town of Bakhmut in May 2023.
Announcing the decision to withdraw early Saturday, military commander General Oleksandr Shirschiy said he had acted to “avoid a siege and protect the lives and health of military personnel.”
“Our soldiers performed their military service with dignity and did everything possible to destroy the elite units of the Russian army, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment,” he said.
General Shirushky, who was just appointed as the country's top commander a few days ago, said the Ukrainian military was “taking steps to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions.”
In a separate statement shortly thereafter, one of his deputies said troops had already departed Avdiivka to a “pre-prepared position.”
“In a situation where the enemy is advancing over the corpses of his soldiers with a 10-to-1 shell superiority, under constant shelling, this is the only correct solution,” General Oleksandr Tarnavsky added. Ta.
'I die here': 'angels' of evacuation help evacuate last residents of front-line town
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby previously warned that Russia was sending “waves of conscripts to attack Ukrainian positions” and that the Ukrainian military was running low on artillery shells.
“And because Congress has not yet passed additional legislation, we are unable to provide Ukraine with the ammunition it desperately needs to deter a Russian attack.”
Ukraine relies heavily on arms supplies from the United States and other Western allies to continue fighting Russia. Russia is a much larger military force with abundant artillery.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Thursday that the United States' failure to approve continued military aid to Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield.
