Russia's Staggering Avdiivka Losses Laid Bare by Ukraine

A bombed vehicle is seen in a residential area on December 31, 2023 in Avdiivka, Ukraine. Russian forces lost more than 47,000 soldiers and 360 tanks in the monthslong assault on the key Donetsk city of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s military has said, as Kyiv pulls its troops from the devastated settlement.

Russian forces lost more than 47,000 soldiers and 360 tanks in the months-long assault on the key Donetsk city of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s military has said, as Kyiv pulls its troops from the devastated settlement.

From October 10, 2023, to February 17, 2024, Moscow’s forces lost 47,186 troops, 364 tanks and 748 armored fighting vehicles during its offensive on Avdiivka, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s Tavria grouping of forces covering Avdiivka, said on Sunday.

Russian forces lost 248 artillery systems and five jets in the more than four months of bitter clashes around Avdiivka, Tarnavskyi added.

Newsweek is unable to independently verify Ukraine’s statistics, and has reached out the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

The figures, however, do offer an indication of the scale of the staggering price Russia’s military has paid to seize Avdiivka. Moscow said on Sunday that its forces had “completely liberated” Avdiivka after months of bitter fighting.

Ukraine’s army chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces had retreated from Avdiivka to “avoid encirclement” and save the lives of its fighters.

“Our soldiers honorably fulfilled their military duty, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, [and] inflicted significant losses on the enemy in manpower and equipment,” Syrskyi said in a statement.

Fighting around Avdiivka in Ukraine’s annexed eastern Donetsk region earned the city the label “meat grinder,” a term used to describe battlegrounds that rack up high casualty counts and absorb significant resources such as armored vehicles.

Ukraine has also lost many fighters and resources defending Avdiivka, the city spending a decade on the front lines in the Donetsk region that Russia annexed in fall 2022. However, Moscow does not control all of the territory in the province.

Russia lost significant numbers of armored vehicles in the initial weeks of the onslaught on Avdiivka and Western analysts suggested that Moscow’s forces switched to infantry-led attacks to preserve its armored materiel.

Tarnavskyi then said earlier in February that Russian forces were “increasingly adding armored groups to assault infantry groups” around Avdiivka. The Russian military “began to use armored vehicles more often for offensive actions on Avdiivka,” Captain Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Tavria group of forces, told Newsweek at the time.

The British Defense Ministry assessed on Friday that Russia had lost at least 400 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in its long-running assault on Avdiivka.

“Ukrainian defenders inflicted huge losses on the enemy and destroyed a significant reserve of the Russian occupiers, which they planned to use in other areas of the front for offensive actions,” Tarnavskyi said on Sunday.

But capturing Avdiivka is a prize for Moscow, both symbolically and strategically. It allows Russia to expand its logistical operations and could pave the way towards other important settlements further west.

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