Military Watch Magazine / USA
On February 17 the Russian Armed Forces captured the strategically located town of Avdiivka in the disputed Donbas region, inflicting extreme casualties on Ukrainian forces in the area which reportedly peaked at approximately 1,500 daily. Drone footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry a day after the retreat began showed ground forces fleeting the town, with large numbers of Ukrainian Army soldiers withdrawing on foot leaving behind significant quantities of heavy equipment. This pullout notable began a day before forces actually received orders to do so, raising speculation that the order to withdraw may have been given to cover for the fact that forces had simply retreated on their own initiative. The footage also notably showed retreating Ukrainian forces continuing to be subjected to artillery bombardment and air strikes, with multiple Ukrainian military vehicles shown to have been taken out.
Western sources have widely blamed the United States’ freeze on arms transfers to Ukraine for the Russian victory, with Ukrainian forces having suffered from increasingly crippling and extreme shortages even when American arms were flowing into the country. These have worsened considerably since. Personnel interviewed near the front lines have consistently reported that positions are increasingly at risk of collapse, with severe personnel shortages after a year of tremendous casualties having left frontline units undermanned, exacerbating the strain imposed by munitions shortages. A number of Russian and Ukrainian sources have reported that when withdrawing from Avdiivka the Ukrainian Army abandoned a number of injured personnel while pulling back, with the Ukrainian government having acknowledged that several personnel were captured during the retreat. Videos aired by a number of Ukrainian outlets showed injured personnel reporting having been left behind, although broad estimates for the numbers abandoned currently vary widely depending on the sources.