Ukrainian soldiers walk past frontline trenches near Barvinkovo in eastern Ukraine on Monday. Credit… David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — Longtime strongholds of Ukraine’s defenses 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 in two suburban towns, Avdiivka and Pisky, on the outskirts of Donetsk city, is a testament to the value of their entrenched positions in the east. Ukraine’s strong defensive positions slowed the Russian army’s advance to a crawl, with only two major cities, Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, and a few tens of miles of territory changing hands despite thousands of soldiers killed on both sides.
It was not clear exactly why attacks on fortifications were increasing, and the attacks were an exception to a general decrease in Russian attacks in the eastern Donbass region, which has been at the center of the war for months. Some military analysts believe the relative lull is partly the result of Russian forces being diverted south to repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive there.
The two cities, mostly abandoned and destroyed, are hardly big prizes to capture, but if they fall it could ease Russian advances on the three major cities in the Donetsk region that remain under Ukrainian control, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.
The Ukrainian army and paramilitary groups built the fortifications in the two cities during the eight years of low-intensity war since Russia’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine to support the separatist region, the Donetsk People’s Republic. Now they are among the easternmost positions of Ukraine.
Passing through abandoned factories and mines, taking advantage of the basements of country homes and using marshes as natural barriers, the defensive lines there have withstood countless attacks. After failing to attack Avdiivka, Russia launched direct tank attacks this week, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research organization.
The institute noted Russian propaganda videos purporting to show Russian troops taking up a position in the ventilation shaft of the Butiyka coal mine, which as of 2015 is the closest Ukrainian position to the city of Donetsk, several miles from what separatists claim that it is their capital.
The Ukrainian General Staff said the tank attacks had not pushed the soldiers out of Avdiivka, but noted that they were a partial success, possibly acknowledging the loss of a strategically and politically important position.
“For days on end, the enemy does not stop trying to attack,” Ukrainian military governor of Avdiivka Vitaly Barabash told Radio Svoboda on Wednesday. “Everywhere it was hit by artillery and air” bombs.
Soldiers representing the Donetsk People’s Republic fire field guns 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 rockets at the city that spray flammable material into the air and then ignite it, creating a giant fireball. Russia’s thermobaric missile system, called Heatwave, is one of the most destructive weapons in Russia’s arsenal.
“People are living in terrible, inhumane conditions,” Mr Barabash said. He said about 2,000 civilians remained in Avdiivka from a pre-invasion population of about 20,000. “Every day the town is shelled about 20 times,” he said.
Russia’s campaign in the Donbass has generally died down in recent weeks after the appearance on the battlefield of US HIMARS, the long-range missile system used to strike ammunition depots behind Russian lines, and the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive around the southern city of Kherson, according to Sergey Grabsky, a former Ukrainian army colonel and war commentator for the Ukrainian news media. Russia has diverted about 10,000 troops from the attack on Slavyansk to protect the south, he said.
“Ukrainian forces have established quite effective defensive positions in the Donbass over the past few years,” Mr. Grabsky said in a telephone interview. The Russians are “frankly stuck in the Donbass now with no real success,” he said. “And they have a new headache: the south, which from the point of view of the Ukrainian armed forces is a more important strategic objective.”
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