Avdiivka attacked from all directions: Ukraine
Published on: Saturday, November 25, 2023
By: AFP
Avdiivka has been on the front line since 2014 and is part of the Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed to annex along with three other regions.
KYIV: A third wave of Russian forces is attacking the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka and systematically shelling the centre of the industrial hub, its Ukrainian head said Friday.
The nearly encircled town near the Russian-held regional stronghold of Donetsk has faced a fierce onslaught for more than a month.
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“The third wave (of assaults) began. They are attacking from all directions, from the flanks of the south and north, as they did before. They are attacking the industrial zone,” Vitaly Barabash, the head of the town, said.
Avdiivka has been on the front line since 2014 and is part of the Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed to have annexed along with three other regions.
“They are attacking from all sides, using a lot of infantry. Machinery went to the industrial zone, because the asphalt surface allows them to do so,” Barabash told state media.
He said Russian forces were targeting Avdiivka with guided air bombs and cluster munitions resulting in between 30 and 40 “massive” strikes each day.
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Barabash said 1,350 residents were remaining in the town that had a pre-war population of around 30,000 people, and that 102 people had been evacuated over the last week.
Under fire since 2014, the town has been largely destroyed by shelling, but has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
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Russia said Friday it had destroyed 16 Ukrainian drones in the south of the country and over the annexed Crimean peninsula.
On Thursday night, “an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using aerial drones against sites on the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted,” Russia’s defence ministry said.
“Air defence systems destroyed 16 drones, including 13 over the Crimean peninsula and three over the territory of the Volgograd region.”
Ukraine has ramped up drone and missile attacks on Russian military installations in and around the peninsula in recent months.
Crimea—annexed by Russia in 2014 — serves as the rear base for the Black Sea Fleet and key supply route for Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military meanwhile said its air defence systems had downed three Iranian-designed attack drones launched by Russian forces overnight.
And, the Kremlin said that it “regretted” Armenia’s decision to skip a summit of a Moscow-led security alliance, amid a souring of relations between the two ex-Soviet allies.
Neither Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan nor his defence minister showed up to a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk on Thursday, which comes as Russia worries Yerevan could pull out of the alliance altogether.
When asked to comment on the absence of Armenia’s delegation, the Kremlin said: “We can express regret in this regard.”
“We hope that Armenia does not change the vector of its foreign policy and remains our ally... We will continue to talk to them,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a state TV reporter.
Tensions between the two countries have run high since September, when Russian peacekeepers failed to intervene in Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia’s high-level snub marks yet another blow to bilateral relations, after Pashinyan shunned a summit attended by Putin in October.
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