Protection of soldiers
Zelensky calls withdrawal from Avdiivka “logical and fair”
February 17, 2024, 1:50 p.m
In the morning, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief gives the order to withdraw from Avdiivka. From Munich, President Zelensky expressly supports this decision, which was about protecting the soldiers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has assessed the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the small town of Avdiivka after months of heavy fighting as a “logical, fair and professional solution” to protect the lives of the soldiers. “That was the main task for us, we protect our people, our soldiers,” said Zelenskyj on the sidelines of the security conference in Munich about his military’s previous decision to abandon the city in eastern Ukraine. In order to protect the soldiers from being surrounded, they were moved to new defensive lines.
It was a “professional decision to save as many lives as possible,” said Zelensky. However, this does not mean any advantage for the Russian army: “The decision to withdraw was made, but Russia gained nothing from it,” emphasized the Ukrainian president.
The new Ukrainian commander-in-chief Olexander Syrskyj announced the order to withdraw from Avdiivka early on Saturday morning. “In view of the operational situation around Avdiivka, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and go into defense on more favorable lines in order to avoid encirclement and protect the life and health of the soldiers,” he wrote on X. Die But the army doesn’t want to give up the city. They will return, he wrote.
Significant gain in territory for Russia
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops from Avdiivka are said to have established themselves on a new second line of defense west of the industrial city in the Donetsk region. “The intensity of the fighting decreased after midnight to six o’clock (5 a.m. CET),” military spokesman for the front sector, Dmytro Lykhovy, said on Ukrainian television. After the peak of the Russian attacks the day before, a shorter lull is now expected from the Russian side. It is unclear to which line the Ukrainian troops have withdrawn.
The Russian military initially did not comment on the changed frontline situation near Avdiivka. Russian troops have been trying to capture Avdiivka since October 2023 with heavy losses. The former industrial city with once over 30,000 inhabitants had been an outpost of Ukraine since 2014 in the immediate vicinity of Donetsk, the Russian-controlled capital of the Donbass coal and steel region. In recent days, the situation for the Ukrainian defenders there has become increasingly difficult.
Observers had suspected that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the city to be taken before the Russian presidential elections in mid-March. It is Russia’s biggest symbolic victory since the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer and its most significant gain of territory since the capture of the city of Bakhmut in May 2023.