The five-month wait for the United States Congress to approve military aid worth 61 billion dollars (around 56 billion euros) to Ukraine may have caused lasting damage that will be felt on the front lines for months.
Russian forces took advantage of the “artillery drought” that has hampered Ukrainian defenses since December to advance on the eastern front, near Avdiivka, making the biggest advance since the first months of the war. Moscow’s progress has prompted warnings from senior Ukrainian military officials of a possible threat to Kiev’s supply lines and support centers in the east, which are now dangerously close to the reach of superior Russian firepower.
The grim news about the progress made comes ahead of a Russian offensive scheduled for the end of May that could threaten Ukraine’s presence in the Donetsk region and the difficult yet modest gains in the occupied port city of Mariupol. Russia threw vast resources against weak Ukrainian defenses on the eastern front lines, advancing to three key points: the vital military center of Pokrovsk, west of Avdiivka; the strategic heights of Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut; and Kurakhove, to the southeast.
On February 17, Ukraine announced that it had withdrawn from Avdiivka, a city disputed for a decade and which Russia appears to have sacrificed hundreds of troops to conquer. However, Moscow’s advance did not stop there. Over the next 10 weeks, as shown by a CNN map and an analysis by the Ukrainian surveillance group DeepStateMap, Russian forces slowly took village by village west of Avdiivka, taking advantage of Kiev’s failure to build fortifications and the reluctance to publicly declare the extent of its territorial losses in that area.
The fall of Avdiivka, Ukraine Avdiivka has been on the front line since 2014, when pro-Moscow separatists seized large swathes of the Donbass region, including the nearby city of Donetsk. After launching what Vladimir Putin called a special military operation in 2022, Ukrainian forces managed to hold the city – with only small Russian gains – for two years, until February 17, 2024, when they withdrew from the area.
Notes: “Confirmed” means that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has received reliable and independently verifiable information demonstrating Russian control or advances in these areas. Russian advances are areas where Russian forces have operated or launched attacks but do not control. “Claimed” areas are those where sources claim control or counter-offensives are taking place, but ISW cannot corroborate or demonstrate that these are false. Sources: Institute for the Study of War with the AEI Critical Threats Project Graphic: Lou Robinson, CNN
Only now has Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, admitted the fall of a series of villages that his subordinates insisted for days were still contested. The resulting pullback showed that Russian forces had, in just over two months, made the most substantial and rapid progress since the July 2022 advances near Severodonetsk, according to a CNN analysis.
Ukrainian reluctance to admit these losses has led to public criticism from some pro-Ukrainian military bloggers and analysts. DeepStateMap, which updates the frontline situation daily, showed significant losses near Avdiivka. One of the group’s founders, Ruslan Mykula, revealed to CNN that they spoke out because they felt that a military spokesman “has the opportunity to verify the real situation, but [ainda] provides false information and this undermines our credibility.”
Mykula said Russian advances near Ocheretyne, a village seized by Russia in recent weeks west of Avdiivka, are “a tactical success so far” but could become “a strategic success.” And he added: “In the current situation, it will be very difficult to stop the enemy because he is advancing where the defense has not paid enough attention.”
According to the same official, defensive fortifications are missing along “the entire left flank” of Avdiivka, which means that the open plains are now vulnerable almost up to the highway leading to the strategic Ukrainian center of Pokrovsk.
Tuesday’s update from the Ukrainian General Staff said its forces were defending a series of villages much closer to Pokrovsk than would be desirable. In Tuesday’s presidential speech, Volodymyr Zelensky demanded a “significant acceleration of supplies [ocidentais] to significantly strengthen the capabilities of our soldiers.” He said Kiev’s defenses needed a “strength that must be demonstrated in the Pokrovsk direction,” along with other dangerous front lines to the south, near Kurakhоve, but also to the northeast, near Kupiansk.
Further Russian advances towards Kurakhove, in the southeastern part of this front line, could endanger the gains made by Ukraine during the summer counteroffensive. To the north, Russia is regularly shelling Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, but also advancing heavily along the front lines near Kupiansk, to reoccupy territory liberated by Ukraine in a lightning advance in late summer 2022.
A Ukrainian soldier from the 65th Brigade opens the door of his armored vehicle on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, April 21 (Andriy AndriyenkoAP)
Ukrainian authorities have also publicly warned of the threat to Chasiv Yar, a small town near Bakhmut, brutally wrested from Ukrainian control last May. Chasiv Yar is located on a hill and Lieutenant Colonel Nazar Voloshyn, spokesman for the Ukrainian Khortytsia command, said this Tuesday on Ukrainian television that Russian forces intend to advance along the canal near the town and seize it. to gain a strategic advantage over neighboring Ukrainian military cities.
“It would be very important for them to take Chasiv Yar before we receive foreign aid… when we no longer have a shortage of ammunition,” Voloshyn told Ukrainian television. “If the enemy captures the dominant heights and the occupants settle there, it will be a big problem for us, because Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Druzhkivka will immediately be attacked.”
Russians visit exhibition in Moscow with military objects seized from Ukraine. Shown here is a North American-made M1A1 Abrams tank (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
If these four cities, which lie along the same highway, are seriously threatened with capture, Russia’s goal of controlling the entire Donetsk region will come much closer to being realized.
Yurii Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles attack drone company in the 92nd separate assault brigade in that area, said the next two months mark a “window of opportunity” for Russian forces. Russian forces realized that Ukraine will soon “have the necessary air defense assets and the necessary range of ammunition concentrated on the front line, which will make it impossible for the enemy to carry out tasks with the intensity they have now”.
