The small town of Avdiivka, which is right on the front lines, has become the center of the war in Ukraine. It is still – just – in Ukrainian control, but Russian troops and guns surround it on three sides.
The Russians hit the town so hard that it’s hard to recognize.
What used to be the town’s largest buildings are marked by concrete shells that float in small hills of rubble. A bomb hit the town’s church and broke the cross on top of it in half. It now points accusingly at the Russian lines.
In the rubble, Russian and Ukrainian troops fight, with drones and the odd tank joining the fight. A lot of people have been killed on both sides, but mostly by the Russian attackers, who have been sending wave after wave of people at the entrenched defenses.
One Ukrainian sniper, known only as “Bess,” told CNN that these hits were like “meat assaults.” His call sign in Ukrainian means “demon,” and the scene he describes is awful. The Omega Special Forces Group officer spoke from a house a few miles behind the lines in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. He said, “The dead soldiers just lie there frozen.”
“No one gets them out of there or takes them away,” he said. “Perhaps people don’t have a job to do; they just go and die.”
“Teren,” who was in charge of a Ukrainian drone intelligence unit in the town, said, “Even if we kill 40 to 70 soldiers with drones in a day, they will come back the next day with more troops and continue to attack.”
He said that his fighters from the 110th Mechanized Brigade had killed at least 1,500 Russians in the 18 months of fighting around the town. They keep coming though.
The exact number of Ukrainians who have died is a closely guarded secret, but the fight has turned into a slow death match between Russia’s seemingly random attacks and the Ukrainians’ limited but determined resources and manpower.
In late December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise trip to Avdiivka. There, he called the fight for the town a “onslaught” and said that it could “determine the overall course of the war” in many ways.
It looks like Ukraine’s leaders are aware of the negative opinions surrounding the defense (but later fall) of Bakhmut in 2023. They understand that protecting soldier lives comes with hanging on to places that aren’t very important strategically.
Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the army, said, “Every piece of our land is precious to us.” But in Avdiivka, he said, “there is no need to do anything remotely reminiscent of a show.”
Tools For The Battle
But those lives rely on guns and weapons.
Avdiivka was frozen over in January, and the temperature was -7.6 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit). CNN saw another group of Omega special forces men rush to their firing position.
As they hurried to set up their Soviet-era rocket launcher, which was attached to the back of an American pickup truck, one of the men flipped the switch to fire a salute.
Then there were clicks and curses. Since the rockets were frozen, they wouldn’t fire.
As they don’t have the Western weapons they want, they know that every missed chance to fight back against the Russians could cost Ukrainian lives.
After a few days, a supply truck plowed through the mud of a field near the town of Marinka to bring much-needed shells to a gun post.
The gunners say they can only fire 30 shells a “good day” and 20 rounds a day, so the cannon, a US-made M777 howitzer, is quiet for most of the day. They said that during last summer’s failed counteroffensive in Ukraine, the gun crew would fire at least twice as many foreign rounds, many of which were made in the United States, at the Russians.
And CNN went to an artillery post 90 minutes north of Avdiivka, near the town of Bakhmut. The ammunition compartment of a US-supplied Paladin howitzer was completely empty. The team didn’t have any shells to fire.
Later that day, four shells were delivered, but they weren’t very dangerous to the Russians—they were just smoke rounds.
The gun captain “Skyba” told CNN, “Every shell that works for the Paladin we use. It’s better than no shells.”
“10 to 1” is the difference between Russian and Ukrainian artillery stores, according to the head of the 93rd mechanized Brigade in Ukraine’s artillery.
“They use old Soviet systems,” Korsar said. “But old Soviet systems can still kill.”
But it doesn’t look like the US will continue to help Ukraine with things like much-needed shells. There is still a lot of fighting on Capitol Hill over future aid packages, and the fact that Trump might not want to give money to Ukraine makes things even less certain.
This month, John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, made it clear: “The help we gave has now come to an end.” The strikes that the Russians are throwing are getting worse.
But the people of Avdiivka will have a lot more to be happy about when they can use their Western guns.
The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which was given to Ukraine by the US and is meant to help infantry, was the tip of the spear in last year’s failed Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is now living up to its name for stopping waves of Russian attacks.
Crew chief “Barbie” told CNN from behind the front lines of Avdiivka, “I doubt that we would be here talking to you” if not for the Bradley.
“The car is rather tough,” he said. “It’s not scared of anything.”
A crew trained in the US fights a Russian T-90 tank, which is one of the strongest in Moscow’s army. CNN got video of the fight from another Bradley unit in the 47th mechanized company. Their fire stops the tank, and its turret spins out of control as an exploding drone hits its side.
But there aren’t many Bradleys made in the US along the front.
The US offered about 200 Bradleys, but dozens have been damaged or destroyed in battle. It’s possible that some of these have been fixed and sent back to the front lines.
Even though Ukrainian troops like how powerful the Bradley is, they have also said bad things about how well it handles the harsh Ukrainian winter and how bad some of the older vehicles that the US sent are.
On the front lines, it’s usual for Ukraine to not have as much firepower as its enemy. Commander of a nearby drone reconnaissance team named “Teren” said that Ukraine does not have enough weapons and gear to beat Russia.
He said that the Ukrainians have to be better pilots and more creative because they don’t have a lot of tools.
“They were 10 times better at drones than we were at the start of the war,” he said. “I believe we are a strong opponent in the drone format right now.” We watch over the sky all the time.”
From the unit’s command post, CNN saw several drones from his unit flying around a Russian foxhole as they looked for Russian troops.
One drone’s powerful cameras caught two Russian troops desperately aiming at a suicide drone that was weaving. The smoke from their guns and cigarettes filled the cold air. The Ukrainian drone dives behind them into the small trench and goes off.
Drone pilots in the area told CNN that the men probably didn’t make it because there were so many drones in the area. CNN doesn’t know what happened to the men.
A Cup That’s Too Full
Still, the Russian attacks are still going on, so “Bess,” the special forces sniper, said that keeping Avdiivka is now a matter of numbers.
He said, “There’s no way you can fit a liter and a half in a liter bottle.”
Under pressure from the country’s top generals, Ukraine’s leaders are thinking about adding up to half a million more troops to the military to make up for Russia’s larger numbers.
At least on the surface, life in Ukrainian towns that aren’t near the front lines doesn’t seem to have been affected by the fighting. There are recruitment posters, military checkpoints, and lots of men in dress on the roads, but there aren’t many obvious signs that daily life is being limited or changed because of the war. There are a lot of people in stores and in coffee shops.
But Drafts Are A Touchy Subject
At this point, only people over the age of 27 are allowed to be mobilized, but the president of Ukraine has decided to get approval from the parliament before doing so. The bill is slowly, and not without problems, making its way through the politicians’ eyes.
Zelensky has also asked how the mobilization will be paid for, since six people will have to pay the salary of every soldier.
The fact that he isn’t saying much shows how politically sensitive public opinion is in Ukraine, even though the country’s enemies are very clear about how they want to destroy Kyiv.
“The existence of Ukraine is deadly for Ukrainians,” one of Russia’s most extreme leaders and former president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram on January 17.
“Why? “The fact that there is an independent state on the historical Russian lands will now be a constant reason to start fighting again,” he said.
When CNN talked to troops back on the front lines, mood was high.
Even though they were tired and rarely angry, the troops agreed that getting more help would mean more time off the front lines.
But for now, that is still a long-shot dream, because the fighting is still going strong in Avdiivka.
“Everything we can and can’t do to hold this line,” Omega Special Forces member “Sayer” told CNN.
He said, “I don’t know what will happen next.” “But Avdiivka is still there.” We are on our own land. There’s nothing to lose.
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