Avdiivka In the rainy May, the sparse vegetation of the Donbass blossomed. Green trees and meadows pass by the roadside, goats graze next to wild horses. But the idyll is deceptive. “The farmer abandoned them when he had to flee,” says Maxim, combat name “Ljuti”, at the wheel of his muddy Mercedes.
Suddenly there’s a bang: a Russian projectile has landed nearby, “too close” as the Major thinks. He presses the gas pedal and accelerates to 160 kilometers per hour, zigzagging between puddles and craters.
The road to Avdiivka is probably one of the most dangerous in the world. The Russians have surrounded the town with a population of 34,000 on three sides, leaving the Ukrainian defenders with a supply corridor almost ten kilometers wide, current maps show.
It is not without reason that observers compare the small town with Bakhmut, Wuhledar and Marjinka: Here, in the center of the Donbass front, some of the fiercest battles of the Ukraine war have been raging since February 2022.
Although the Russians apparently carry out regular assaults, the Ukrainians continue to control the urban area. Avdiivka is of strategic importance for Kiev: the city of Donetsk, a hub of the Russian military, is so close that the center can be seen from here. Moscow desperately wants to expel the enemy and reduces Avdiivka to rubble with artillery, rockets and aircraft bombs.
Destroyed Hospital
The civilian population experiences the fighting as an endless nightmare. No building in Avdiivka is unscathed. On the drive to the city center we only encounter ruins. All that remains of the houses hit by rockets are piles of rubble. Others appear almost intact. But black burn marks litter its outer walls. Most roofs, windows and doors are missing.
Now about 1700 people live in the city.
(Photo: AP)
Despite all evacuation calls, 1,700 people still live in the city, according to the news site “Euromaidan Press”. Since the Russians have probably destroyed all civil infrastructure, there is no longer a fire brigade in Avdiivka, no ambulances and only a makeshift hospital.
Before the war, the Central City Hospital was one of the most modern in the country, with a Covid department and well-equipped operating rooms. He had 178 employees, says medical director Vitaly Sitnik. Now it’s thirteen. “Almost everyone lives here because they no longer have any apartments,” says the 55-year-old as he guides us through the ground floor, which has remained more or less intact.
The upper floors are destroyed; the last rocket hit in mid-May, its debris is still in the yard. Until recently, patients and staff were able to flee to a shelter containing beds, supplies and medicines to protect themselves from attack. But since the sewage system was destroyed, heavy rainfall pushed up the groundwater. The beds are now in a small lake.
“We have dead and injured people here almost every day,” says Sitnik. So far this morning it has been unusually quiet, “but the day is still long”. The doctors can only do what is absolutely necessary: they clean wounds and stabilize the patients so that they can be transported. Working like this is difficult, says Sitnik. “I want to live differently,” he replies when asked if he’s thinking of leaving Avdiivka. “But someone has to help the people here. There is no one but us.”
A government utility
It is not only the medical treatment of civilians that is becoming increasingly impossible. Since all shops have been closed, practically only volunteers bring groceries into the city. The only remaining state supply point is a “point of invincibility” that opened at the end of March. This is what the Ukrainian government calls local spaces where civilians can find shelter and essential services.
The air-raid shelter is in a backyard, on the wall of a burned-out building is written “God loves the infantry”. However, only civilians move in the five rooms. The ten employees each look after almost 200 men and women six days a week. There is a warm shower, hot coffee, internet, a TV connection – and even desserts. “People call us ‘the sweet women,'” Lyudmila announces. “A man once said that it’s like heaven here.”
This gives an idea of the conditions under which the remaining civilians live in Avdiivka. The few whose four walls are habitable at all live under constant fire, without running water and heat, in darkness. “People are extremely isolated,” says Marina, the director of the center, who, like all employees, does not want to give her last name out of fear. Residents come here to feel something like normality for a few hours.
The restlessness and fear that characterize everyday life are also transferred to the basement. The 45-year-old head of the center observes that people are nervous and agitated. She only took on this task because nobody else was there. “Many come here drunk, that’s the only thing we don’t tolerate.” But most of them aren’t particularly grateful, says the former nurse.
war-weary population
Marina is suggesting that the remaining five percent of the city’s population are not particularly pro-Ukrainian. But she doesn’t want to say it like that. She describes the people of the city as local patriots and people who have nowhere to go or don’t want to leave their animals behind. It’s not about politics. “They just want the shelling to stop.”
Major Ukrainian advances were also reported on the southern flank of Avdiivka.
(Photo: AP)
Fear and distrust are omnipresent in Avdiivka. People can be seen on the sidewalks and in the courtyards. But they disappear as soon as unknown people or Maxim’s military vehicle “Lyuti” appear.
In his Mercedes, he takes us to the position of his military police unit: the so-called Sich battalion reports to the Ministry of the Interior, but has its roots in a volunteer militia.
It was founded by the right-wing extremist party Swoboda. The major, who has been serving in Avdiivka since 2014, describes himself as a “right-wing, pro-state nationalist”. He doesn’t like liberals, and Russians even less. Nonetheless, he sees Ukraine as a multi-ethnic state that needs to be restored to the 1991 borders. The 36-year-old rejects further territorial claims.
The situation in Avdiivka frustrates him, he says. Many of the remaining residents here are pro-Russian. The job of his battalion is to cover the backs of the soldiers on the flanks of the city.
Based in a former grocery store, the unit fights off Russian saboteurs attempting to invade the city and sleeper cells. “We could kill all the ‘Schduni’ in a single day,” says Lyuti, a law graduate, about those “waiting people” whom the Russians would like to welcome. “But we strictly abide by the law.”
Distrust of Ukrainian soldiers
Since there is hardly any news from the city, which is cut off from the Internet, the claim cannot be verified. What is astonishing, however, is that the soldiers move freely with us through the quarters, despite the constantly audible explosions.
The obvious distrust of the people towards the uniformed and the helmeted journalists is noticeable again and again. “Half of the residents are for us, half against us,” comments a soldier with the combat name “Schtrich”. “They blame us for the Russian shelling.” Residents’ perception has its own logic, since Ukrainian positions are in residential areas.
According to Schtrich, the Russians are monitoring the city with drones and shooting at anything that looks like the Ukrainian military. “They usually hit the houses of the civilians.” But when he leads us through the ruins of an almost new school, he struggles with his composure. “We never had a position here,” the 29-year-old clarifies.
A woman suddenly steps out of the door of a residential building. She is holding a candle in her hand. “Our three neighbors are still there,” she says, pointing to a pile of rubble that is hardly recognizable as a house. “This is her grave now. We remember them,” she says through tears. “Schstrich” turns away. Unfortunately, a salvage is not possible because there are no heavy machines for this in the city. “And if we had them, they would bomb the Russians immediately.”
The strength of the defense
“Schtrich” and “Lyuti” know Avdiivka from more peaceful times, and they witnessed how it even temporarily recovered after fighting during Russia’s aggression in Donbass in 2014.
The road to Avdiivka is one of the most dangerous in the world.
(Photo: Reuters)
Now that’s just a distant memory. “Compared to Bakhmut and Marjinka, Avdiivka remained relatively intact. But that’s a matter of time,” says “Schtrich”. They would have to defend the city at all costs. “The war started here, and here we have to make sure that the rest of the country is safe.”
His superior “Ljuti” interjects whether this succeeds, of course, depends heavily on the counter-offensive. The increasing fighting on various sectors of the front since the weekend indicated that at least the preparations are entering a hot phase.
Major Ukrainian advances were also reported on the southern flank of Avdiivka. Nevertheless, the major suspects the focus elsewhere: “At the moment it looks more like we’re staying on the defensive.”
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the Ukraine war:
However, the Russians recently moved units from the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk from Avdiivka to Bakhmut to replace the “Wagner” paramilitaries there. The officer hopes that if the offensive gains strength, the enemy will have to withdraw more troops.
Then his unit could advance to Donetsk. “The best and worst case are close together in Avdiivka. Either we can stab Russia’s Hydra in the heart. Or we will be surrounded and lost.”
More: You can find the latest developments in our news blog on the Ukraine war