Starved of ammunition, the gunners of Ukraine’s 47th Brigade were not able to hit the Russian convoy before it was upon their infantry on Avdiivka’s northern flank.
Five armoured vehicles rolled into the village of Stepove, guns firing, allowing about 40 Russian soldiers to run for cover in the houses around Ukrainian positions. A Bradley fighting vehicle was deployed towards the Russians. American armour was to be put to the test against Russian.
This fierce battle was part of a desperate action to save Avdiivka, in the east of the country, from imminent collapse and prevent a victory for President Putin in time for the launch of his election campaign and New Year festivities.
The 47th is one of Ukraine’s best-equipped brigades. Outfitted with German Leopard 2 tanks and American Bradley M1 fighting vehicles to lead the summer counteroffensive, it was tasked with breaking heavily fortified positions in a run to the Black Sea, but was withdrawn in October after making only six miles, mauled by Russian bombing, minefields and Lancet drones.
“With great equipment comes great responsibilities,” said Sergeant Danylo “Sausage”, 23, who is part of a 2nd Battalion, 47th Brigade air reconnaissance team. He shows me a live feed of the battle from four of his drones.
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The war in Ukraine is at a critical moment. The fall of Avdiivka would mean Ukrainian forces fall back to the reservoirs of Karlivka and the heights at Ocheretyne. Karlivka supplies water to the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in the Donbas, with any battle there severely disrupting its flow. Seizing the heights at Ocheretyne, two miles away, would allow the Russians to begin razing Myrnohrad, a city of 50,000.
Unless the West provides brigades like the 47th with ammunition, they will be unable to stop Putin’s troops. The Russians could run on to Dnipro, with a population of one million, and sweep north towards Kyiv, cutting off Ukraine’s army in the Donbas.
Holding Avdiivka is also key to maintaining morale. Its defence is a tribute to the thousands of soldiers who have died there since Russia’s hybrid invasion of 2014. And the Ukrainian positions here are a dagger at the throat of the occupied city of Donetsk, which is central to any future Ukrainian counteroffensive to recover the Donbas region.
The commitment of one of Ukraine’s best brigades is testament to the importance of this battle, where Ukrainian troops cling on despite almost complete encirclement, their supply and medical evacuation vehicles running through heavy artillery fire for the last 14 miles of their route.
Despite heavy losses over the summer, the men of the 47th are motivated and ready to fight. Yet partisan politics in Washington is delaying their essential supplies and the EU’s failure to meet its promise to deliver a million artillery rounds have forced Ukrainian troops to ration their ammunition, with catastrophic consequences on the battlefield.
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“It’s a shitty situation,” Sausage said. The shell shortage forces soldiers like Sergeant Taras “Fizruk”, a 31-year-old mortar gunner, also from the 2nd Battalion, to make impossible life and death decisions.
“We had ten times more ammunition over summer, and better quality,” he said. “American rounds come in batches of almost identical weights, which makes it easier to correct fire, with very few duds. Now we have shells from all over the world with different qualities and we only get 15 for three days. Last week we got a batch full of duds.”
Instead of firing on Russians as soon as they come within range, they have to wait to be sure they are heading for their positions, and only hit large groups.
“We should be controlling our sector from 4km away, so we can kill a few hundred Russian soldiers before they get to our infantry and we only take a few wounded,” he said. “But without ammunition we can’t. When it’s two or three soldiers I’m not shooting any more, only when it’s a critical situation, say ten guys close to our infantry, we will work. If our rounds aren’t the same weight, the next round will fly two hundred metres past the Russians. And then it’s too late.”
Rather than watch helplessly as smaller groups encroach on their infantry, his men sometimes resort to flying their unarmed drones at enemy troops, who temporarily scatter fearing they are about to have a grenade dropped on them.
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Both men say the brigade is not getting enough equipment. Anticipating their western allies becoming distracted by the crisis in the Middle East, they fundraised for those items they can buy, but much of it is held up at the border by a blockade of Polish truckers, disgruntled that Ukrainian drivers are undercutting their wages in Europe.
For now, Ukraine is on the defensive. The railroad which runs through the village of Stepove marks the northern flank of Avdiivka’s last line of defence. The village holds, but it is bloody, gruelling work. The Russians seem able to absorb an endless amount of casualties, spurred on by fear of their own commanders. Ukrainian defenders are suffering too. American M113 armoured personnel carriers on the road from Avdiivka to Ocheretyne pull out a steady stream of casualties.
Just as during the counteroffensive in the south, Russian air superiority and the delay in the delivery of F16 jets capable of standing off Russian bombers means that Avdiivka is in ruins, hit daily by 500kg Russian KAB bombs. “Ten days ago 32 KABs hit the city in a single day,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of the Avdiivka City Military Administration, said.
Barabash grew up in a village near Avdiivka, which had a population of 32,000 before the invasion. Now he is presiding over the hasty evacuation of its remaining 1,300 inhabitants.
“It’s a sad thing to see the city I’ve known since childhood and the village where I was born being erased. I’ve been head of the city since 2020 and we made a lot of improvements in those two years. It’s all being wiped out,” he said.
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“The town changes not by the day, but by the hour. In the morning you drive past a damaged building, then the bombs fall and when you leave in the evening, it’s gone.”
Additional reporting by Oleksii Savchenko
