Ukrainian army withdraws from Avdiivka to “avoid encirclement”, a victory for Moscow. “In the situation where the enemy is advancing by walking over the corpses of its own soldiers and with ten times more shells (...) this is the only right decision,” continued General Tarnavsky.
Avdiïvka, which had around 34,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion launched in February 2022, has an important symbolic value. Moscow hopes its capture will make Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk more difficult.