The battle for Avdiivka: Bakhmut revisited?

"Winter is coming in Ukraine, and as it approaches, just as last year, Russia has gone on the offensive in the east," said Francis Farrell in The Kyiv Independent. 

On 9 October, hundreds of Russian armoured vehicles and thousands of troops, backed up by massive air power, made for Avdiivka, a small city in eastern Donetsk. Held by Ukraine since 2014, Avdiivka is considered strategically useful by Moscow, since it would allow Russian troops to push the front line back and block any Ukrainian advances towards Donetsk City, nine miles away. 

So far, though, the operation has been a costly "failure": Kyiv estimates that some 5,000 Russian troops have been killed in the offensive, which has also cost Moscow over 100 armoured vehicles. But it’s early days, and Russia is ready to throw more men into the grinder as it seeks a symbolic gain.

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'Ukraine running short on manpower'

In the long-term, it may well succeed, said Stephen Bryen in the Asia Times (Hong Kong). It’s well known that Ukraine is "running short on manpower", and is even reported to have arrested thousands of young people trying to flee its borders to escape conscription. It might also be facing "collapsing Western support": weapons stockpiles in Europe are running low, and against the backdrop of the Middle East conflict, the US’s appetite for funding the war is also on the wane. We saw in Bakhmut that Russia is capable of grinding its enemy down once it sets its sights on victory; and Ukraine’s stalled summer counteroffensive was another blow for Kyiv.

Moscow still has a vast pool of men who can be conscripted, said Ben Soodavar on The Conversation, and it is willing to withstand mass causalities in Avdiivka, which is already reported to be half-surrounded by enemy troops. Russia will be a formidable opponent.

'Counting on the drones, mines and artillery to win the fight'

Even so, Avdiivka is a strange target at which to throw resources, said Alexey Sochnev on RTVI (Moscow). Surrounded by flat, open land, the former industrial city has become a "fortress" for Ukraine: it’s defended by up to 15,000 troops and concrete fortifications, and has withstood countless Russian bombardments in the past 18 months.

Russia will try to break those defences with modern assault vehicles and its 1.36 tonne aerial glide bombs, said David Axe in Forbes (New York). But the Ukrainians have mined the main approaches to the city, and have explosive-laden drones and missiles of their own to call upon. They have so far pulled relatively few troops away from other regions to defend Avdiivka; instead, "they’re counting on the drones, mines and artillery to win the fight".