Dwindling ammunition threatens Ukraine’s hold on the 1000-kilometre front line under withering assault by Russian artillery. Defensive lines are in jeopardy.
Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region on Saturday after daily Russian onslaughts from three directions for the last four months.
Avdiivka was a stronghold for Ukrainian positions deeper inside the country, away from Russia. A frontline city ever since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the fortified settlement with a maze of trenches and tunnels served to protect important — less strengthened — logistical hubs further west.
Its seizure boosts Russian morale and confirms that the Kremlin’s troops are now setting the pace in the fight, to the dismay of Ukrainian forces who have managed only incremental gains since their counter offensive last year.
The Ukrainian military command claimed that it had inflicted “losses of 20,018 personnel, 199 tanks, and 481 armoured combat vehicles” in the region from Avdiivka through western Zaporizhzhia between January 1 and February 15.
Inaction by US Congress
The United States government linked the loss of Avdiivka to Congressional inaction on $US60 billion ($92 billion) in military aid for Ukraine.
President Joe Biden said he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Saturday phone call after Ukraine announced it was withdrawing troops from Avdiivka that he remained confident that the US funding would eventually come through. But, when reporters asked if he was confident a deal could be struck before Ukraine loses more territory, Biden responded: “I’m not.”
The Associated Press interviewed over a dozen commanders, including heads of artillery units, in the war’s most intense combat zones in the weeks ahead of Avdiivka’s fall. They said shortages, which have always plagued Ukrainian forces since the full-scale invasion, grew acute last northern autumn.
Dwindling supplies of Western-supplied long-range artillery in particular means Ukrainian forces are inhibited from striking high-value targets deep behind Russian lines, where heavy equipment and personnel are accumulated.
For weeks, Ukrainian forces across the frontline have complained about critical shortages in ammunition, with some artillery batteries fighting with only 10 per cent of supply they need.
Desperate to economise shells, military leaders ordered units to fire at only precise targets. But commanders on the ground say this is barely enough to restrain their better supplied enemy. Concerns are growing that without military aid the fall of Avdiivka may be repeated in other parts of the frontline.
Staggering cost of maintaining superyacht seized from oligarch
The withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers from the heavily fortified town handed Russia its biggest victory since the battle of Bakhmut last year.
It will allow the Kremlin’s troops to push their offensive further west, deeper into Ukrainian-held territory over less-fortified areas. Pokrovsk, a railway junction further east, could be the next Russian objective, military bloggers said.
Concerns abound about how the ammunition shortage will impact Ukrainian forces in other sectors of the frontline. The Kupiansk line, in Ukraine’s northeast, is fragile. Russia has been intensifying attacks in the direction for months in a bid to recapture the important logistics hub it had lost in the fall of 2022.
