Agencies kyiv

Kyiv

Updated Saturday, February 17, 2024-09:39

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Ukraine has announced the withdrawal of its troops from the eastern city of

Avdivka

in the face of the advance of Russian forces and increasingly louder voices within the Ukrainian Army about the impossibility of maintaining this front.

"Taking into account the operational situation around Avdivka, in order to avoid encirclement and

preserve the life and health of the military

, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to the defense on more favorable lines," wrote the new commander in head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,

Oleksandr Sirski

, on his Facebook account.

"We are taking measures to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions. The life of military personnel is the highest value.

We will return to Avdivka

," the head of the Army promised.

The withdrawal from Avdivka is the first major military decision of Oleksander Sirski as the new head of the Ukrainian army, appointed on February 8.

"

Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity

, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units and inflict significant losses on the enemy," Sirski specified.

Endurance

Since October, Ukrainian soldiers have resisted, outnumbered and materially inferior, the Russian assaults against this town in the

Donbas

mining basin , where the situation had become especially critical in recent days.

General Tarnavski had acknowledged on Friday the existence of street fighting within the city, the withdrawal of his troops from some positions and the construction of defensive structures to which they could retreat if necessary.

"In the situation in which

the enemy advances on the corpses of its own soldiers and has ten times more howitzers

(...) This is the only good solution," Tarnavski justified after the withdrawal was announced.

The general stressed that his forces avoided being surrounded by the enemy and were already positioned in the new defense lines near this largely destroyed industrial city.

Avdivka had become a symbol of the resistance of kyiv forces as the second anniversary of the start of the invasion launched by Moscow on February 24, 2022 approaches.

The city was briefly taken over in July 2014 by pro-Russian separatists but returned to the control of Kiev, which had held it all this time despite its

proximity to Donetsk

, a separatist stronghold in eastern Ukraine for ten years.

Avdivka is the most significant advance for Russia since the conquest of

Bakhmut

in May 2023, after months of fierce fighting that left thousands dead.

Despite being largely destroyed, some

900 civilians remain there,

according to local authorities. Russia hopes its seizure will make Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk more difficult.