KYIV - Ukrainian troops withdrew from the devastated eastern town of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s new army chief said in the early hours of Feb 17, paving the way for Russia’s biggest advance since May 2023 when it captured the city of Bakhmut.

The withdrawal, announced as Ukraine faces acute shortages of ammunition with US military aid delayed for months in Congress, aimed to save troops from being fully surrounded by Russian forces after months of fierce fighting, Kyiv said.

Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who took the helm of the Ukrainian military in a major shake-up last week, said Ukrainian forces had moved back to more secure positions outside the town that had a pre-war population of 32,000.

“I decided to withdraw our units from the town and move to defence from more favourable lines in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen,” he was quoted as saying in a statement.

Nearly two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, the withdrawal is the clearest sign yet of how the tide of the war has turned in Moscow’s favour after a Ukrainian counter-offensive failed to break through Russian lines in 2023.

The withdrawal was conducted according to plan, but some Ukrainian soldiers were captured by Russia in the final stages, Brigadier-General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said, without specifying how many.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his troops for “exhausting” Russian forces in Avdiivka and said he agreed with the decision to withdraw in order to save lives.

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Feb 17, Mr Zelensky implored his Western allies to step up supplies of military aid and suggested the withdrawal was partly caused by a lack of weapons.

“Now, (the military) will replenish, they will wait for the relevant weapons, of which there simply weren’t enough, simply aren’t enough,” he said. “Russia has long-range weapons, while we simply don’t have enough.”

United States President Joe Biden had said on Feb 15 that Avdiivka risked falling to Russian forces because of ammunition shortages, following months of Republican congressional opposition to a new US military aid package for Kyiv.

Capturing Avdiivka is key to Russia’s aim of securing full control of the two provinces that make up the industrial Donbas region, and could hand Mr Putin a battlefield victory as he seeks re-election in March.

Avdiivka has borne the brunt of mounting offensive pressure by Russian forces in the east, as wavering Western military aid has compounded the fatigue of troops fighting for almost two years.

“We are taking measures to stabilise the situation and maintain our positions,” Col-Gen Syrskyi said.

The Russian Defence Ministry did not single out the battle for Avdiivka in a statement on Feb 17, but said that Russian forces had “improved their positions” on the Donetsk front.

Some troops captured

Brig-Gen Tarnavskyi, the commander who has been overseeing the fighting in Avdiivka for months, said Ukrainian troops had fallen back to a second line of defence.

“At the final stage of the operation, under the pressure of the overwhelming enemy forces, a certain number of Ukrainian servicemen were captured,” Brig-Gen Tarnavskyi wrote on Telegram.

Russia stepped up its offensive on Avdiivka in October and Ukraine’s positions had been looking increasingly fraught for weeks.

The Third Assault Brigade, a prominent Ukrainian infantry assault unit, was rushed into the town to help reinforce troops this week as other Ukrainian forces pulled back from the south-east of the town.

The unit described the fighting as “hell” and said on social media that Ukrainian defenders had been outnumbered by Russian forces by a ratio of about six to 100 in some places.

Russia has not given details of its losses in the brutal fighting for the town, but Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts say its advances have come at a staggering cost in terms of personnel and armoured vehicles.

The town, where fewer than 1,000 residents are left, lies just north of the Russian-held bastion of Donetsk, which Ukraine lost control of in 2014 when Moscow’s proxies began an uprising. Avdiivka has a vast coke plant that has stopped functioning during the war. REUTERS