by Simplicius The Thinker
Well, it finally happened: Avdeevka has fallen, or should I say Avdeyevka, as it’s being styled by many outlets like Sputnik now that it has returned home.
Ukrainian forces retreated—or attempted to—from every part of Avdeevka, even in the Coke Plant, leaving the new front looking like this:
The yellow lines represent the rough direction of current battles as Russian forces reportedly attempt to storm Latochkino—with some early reports already claiming it has been taken, or at the least that AFU has withdrawn from it, creating a gray zone—with the logical extension that forces from the south near Severne will attempt to close the new gap formed north of the old Zenit/Air Defense Base area.
Interestingly, rumor has it that Zelensky was desperate to hold Avdeevka through his time at the Munich conference, so as not to be humiliated. However, the withdrawal order was only given because the 3rd Brigade (Azov) had already totally countermanded orders and began withdrawing on their own, with other units possibly following. To stave off total collapse of the command, Syrsky was forced to give an official order of withdrawal, but Zelensky is reportedly furious, as per Resident_UA channel:
Our source in the OP said that the Office of the President instructed the General Staff and the Security Council to conduct an investigation in the 3-brigade, which refused to comply with the order and enter Avdeevka in position. On Bankova, they are very angry at Syrsky, who promised to keep the city while Zelensky on a EU tour, but I had to urgently leave the most fortified positions that had been created in Avdeevka for ten years.
In quickly taking over such a large area, Russian MOD’s official numbers claim a likely record day with around 2300 AFU either killed, wounded, or captured:
And while the pro-UA crowd scoffed, interestingly Ukrainian MP Peter Derbal gave the number as 850 soldiers lost in the Avdeevka retreat:
There were some unconfirmed Russian reports of over 500 AFU prisoners being taken, and while I haven’t seen quite that high of a number, I can confidently say that yesterday was possibly the most videos of captured AFU that I’ve seen. I myself have posted probably over a dozen videos, and there are still yet others I didn’t even bother posting. Some samples: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and many others.
The most striking however was this young company officer, a lieutenant, who gave the juiciest details about the AFU’s battle order and plans for the Avdeevka zone:
Some of the revelations confirmed some long-standing reports, like that the zone’s battalion commanders sit 40km away in Pokrovsk and refuse to come to the front.
Naturally, the usual suspects were utterly despondent—and in fact, a new tone of total cynicism and distrust in the tired and predictable propaganda of Ukrainian authorities was noted among some of the biggest luminaries:
Putin issued an official decree congratulating Colonel General Mordvichev who, as commander of the ‘Center’ group of forces, was the sector commander in charge of the Avdeevka capture. In the message he also outlined precisely which Russian units were involved in the heroic feat:
Supreme Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
to General Colonel MORDVICHEV A.N.
Today, the troop group ‘Center,’ while advancing, has completely captured the city of Avdeevka of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The units involved include: the 30th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd army; the 35th separate motorized rifle brigade, the 55th separate mountain motorized rifle brigade, the 74th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 41st army; the 1st separate motorized rifle brigade, the 9th separate motorized rifle brigade, the 114th separate motorized rifle brigade, the 1454th motorized rifle regiment, the 10th tank regiment of the 1st army corps; the 6th tank regiment, the 80th tank regiment, the 239th tank regiment of the 90th tank division.
I express my gratitude for the excellent combat actions to all the troops under your command that participated in the battles for Avdeevka.
Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in battle while carrying out the tasks of the special military operation!
Supreme Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation V. Putin
In particular brought to light were units of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District. Both the mentioned 55th Separate Mountain and 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade belong to the group, and are said to be comprised of a lot of Tuvans and Buryats, which led to figures like Roepcke claiming Putin is “exploiting ethnic minorities”.
And here the 30th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 2nd Guards Army from Samara, Russia give their side of the story of how the final capture went down:
The general gist of the Avdeevka battle appeared to happen along these lines: in the earliest stages, DPR units like the 114th were used as the spearhead and damage-soakers, reinforced heavily with Storm-Z penals. As the breakthroughs increasingly came, more Russian units were inserted from the 41st CAA. This culminated in the final couple weeks, as Ukrainian lines began to break, Russia inserted more elite Spetsnaz and scout units to push through swiftly and surround flustered and haggard Ukrainian defenders.
By the way, interestingly, the 74th seen above in particular had already liberated southern Ukraine once in WWII, as per wiki:
It’s tradition for them.
Ukraine’s final consolatory cope is that Russia suffered upwards of 50-100k losses in taking Avdeevka, or so they claim. Unfortunately, this is not backed in even the slightest by their own most meticulous casualty analysts like MediaZona, which still has Russian losses dipping sharply in the last couple months:
Granted, January/February figures will likely be revised upwards retroactively, but probably not dramatically.
The problem is, UA sources pulled wool over their followers’ eyes by continuously replaying old losses or showing highly edited videos which didn’t actually represent many casualties. One recent demonstrative example: one of UA’s top accounts, Dmitry from ‘WarTranslated’, posted a video earlier in the week claiming to show a Russian soldier walking around a corpse-strewn battlefield in Avdeevka. But his own geolocation of it was far east of Stepove, near Krasnogorovka, where battles had not raged in many months. In fact the strongest battles of that area were in early 2023, which is likely when the footage is from—as that’s when Russia first captured the adjacent area, leading to the conditions which facilitated the later Avdeevka assault.
The flagrant lies and exaggerations, as usual, work against Ukraine.
Conversely, the losses as recorded by direct Ukrainian troops from Avdeevka are staggering, by all accounts. Some samples:
And many of the captured POWs speak of high losses in their units as a universal fact.
