AFU Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky has announced the withdrawal of all AFU units from Avdeevka
The chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, has announced the decision to withdraw AFU units from Avdeevka, which is located near Donetsk, and switch to defence.
“Based on the operational situation around Avdeevka … I have made a decision to withdraw our units from the city and switch to defence,” he wrote on Facebook* (owned by Meta, whose activities are banned in Russia as extremist).
The Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing the commander of the AFU’s Tavriya group Oleksandr Tarnavskyy, claims that Ukrainian troops have already withdrawn from Avdeevka.
Earlier, Tarnavskyy said that Ukrainian troops were withdrawing from destroyed positions in Avdeevka, several military men were captured during the retreat.
On Friday, a Ukrainian assault brigade urgently dispatched to help the AFU in Avdeevka called “its new home” a coke plant located on the northwestern outskirts of the city. As the Ukrainian daily Strana.ua reported, in some places the brigade is completely surrounded.
On Wednesday, Dmytro Likhovoy, a spokesman for the AFU’s Tavria operational-strategic grouping, admitted that the AFU was preparing for the imminent loss of the main supply line for its troops near Avdeevka, a situation in which the Ukrainian command had earlier recognised as “extremely difficult”.
On Friday, the Pentagon said the Ukrainian military was running out of ammunition and other critical resources, and called the impending loss of Avdeevka a harbinger of new defeats inevitable without renewed U.S. aid.
Avdeevka, a northern suburb of Donetsk, was a powerful AFU stronghold.
* The activities of Meta (social networks Facebook and Instagram) are banned in Russia as extremist.
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