Ukrainian soldiers along front line trenches near Barvinkove in eastern Ukraine on Monday. Credit…David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — The long-standing strongholds of Ukraine’s defense in the east have come under intense attack in recent days, according to the Ukrainian military and Western military analysts.
That Ukrainian soldiers still hold the maze of trenches and fortifications of two suburban towns, Avdiivka and Pisky, on the edge of Donetsk city is a testament to the value of their dug-in positions in the east. Ukraine’s strong defensive positions have slowed the Russian army’s advance to a standstill, with only two major cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and a few tens of kilometers of territory changing hands despite thousands of soldiers being killed on both sides
It was not clear exactly why the assaults on the fortifications have intensified, and the assaults are an exception to a general decrease in Russian attacks in the eastern Donbas region, which had been the focus of the war for months. Some military analysts believe the relative calm has been partly the result of Russian forces being diverted south to fend off a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The two cities, mostly deserted and destroyed, are hardly big prizes to capture, but if they fell, it could ease Russian advances toward the three major cities in the Donetsk region that remain under Ukrainian control, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The Ukrainian military and paramilitary groups built the fortifications in the two cities during the eight years of low-intensity war following Russia’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine to shore up a separatist region, the Donetsk People’s Republic. They are now among the easternmost positions in Ukraine.
Weaving between abandoned factories and mines, tapping root cellars in country houses and using swamps as natural barriers, the defensive lines there have withstood countless assaults. After failing to outflank Avdiivka, Russia began direct tank attacks this week, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research organization.
The institute observed Russian propaganda videos suggesting that Russian troops had stormed a position at the Butiyka coal mine ventilation shaft, which as of 2015 was the closest Ukrainian position to the city of Donetsk, a few miles from which the separatists say is their capital. .
The Ukrainian General Staff has said that the tank assaults did not push its soldiers from Avdiivka, but noted that they were a partial success, in a possible acknowledgment of the loss of the strategically and politically important position.
“For days in a row, the enemy has not relented in attack attempts,” the Ukrainian military governor of Avdiivka, Vitaliy Barabash, told Radio Liberty on Wednesday. “Everywhere is being hit by artillery and aviation bombs.”
Soldiers representing the Donetsk People’s Republic fire a field weapon on the front line near Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in June. Credit… Alessandro Guerra/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Russian military has also fired at the city with rockets that spray flammable material into the air and then ignite it, creating a giant fireball. The Russian Thermobaric Rocket System, nicknamed the Heat Wave, is one of the most destructive weapons in the Russian arsenal.
“People live in horrible, inhumane conditions,” said Mr. Barabash. He said about 2,000 civilians remained in Avdiivka out of a population of about 20,000 before the invasion. “Every day, the city is bombed about 20 times,” he said.
In general, Russia’s campaign in Donbas has been winding down in recent weeks after the appearance on the battlefield of the American HIMARS, the long-range rocket-launching system used to hit ammunition depots behind of Russian lines, and the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive around the southern city of Kherson, according to Serhiy Grabskiy, a former Ukrainian army colonel and war commentator for Ukrainian media. Russia has diverted about 10,000 troops from the attack on Sloviansk to defend the south, he said.
“Ukrainian forces created quite effective defensive positions in the Donbas over the past few years,” said Mr. Grabskiy in a telephone interview. The Russians “are frankly stuck in the Donbas now with no real success,” he said. “And they have a new headache: the south, which from the perspective of the Ukrainian armed forces is a more important strategic objective.”