Ukraine May Have Deployed One Its Best Brigades To Try To Save Avdiivka

Ukraine is reinforcing Avdiivka. And there are good reasons to believe it’s bolstering the eastern city—current the locus of Russia’s winter offensive—with one of the best brigades in the Ukrainian army.

The 3rd Assault Brigade. The only Ukrainian ground-combat brigade that we know for sure was in reserve in eastern Ukraine as of last week.

Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavriya group of forces in Avdiivka, announced the reinforcement on Telegram on Saturday. “We strengthen the blocking line, set up additional firing positions and use fresh effective forces,” Tarnavskyi wrote. “Logistical delivery continues.”

That the Ukrainians would reinforce Avdiivka was not a foregone conclusion. In apparently choosing to stay and fight, Ukrainian forces are accepting enormous risk.

After four months of hard fighting, Russian troops from the 2nd and 41st Combined Arms Armies finally breached Avdiivka—a key Ukrainian stronghold just five miles northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk—earlier this month and approached within a few hundred yards of the main road by which the Ukrainian garrison, centered on the 110th Mechanized Brigade, gets supplies into the city.

At that point, Tarnavskyi had two options. Pull back the 110th Brigade’s survivors from the exposed eastern part of the city and consolidate the Ukrainian line in central Avdiivka or just outside the city, to the west.

Or: reinforce the 110th Brigade and try to push the much larger Russian force away from the garrison’s supply lines.

It’s possible it wasn’t Tarnavskyi’s decision to make.

Last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky removed his popular top general, the charismatic Valery Zaluzhny, and replaced him with the unpopular former head of the ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Zaluzhny has a reputation—deserved or not—for embracing a mobile defense in order to minimize Ukrainian casualties. Syrskyi by contrast has a reputation—again, deserved or not—for accepting high casualties in stubborn, static fights.

It’s possible that, in promoting Syrskyi, Zelensky signaled his intention to fight for Avdiivka. Even at high cost.

In any event, it seems fresh Ukrainian forces have arrived in the now-lifeless ruins of the once thriving industrial city with a pre-war population of 30,000. Their first and most obvious task is to relieve pressure on the main paved east-west road into central Avdiivka, Hrushevsky Street.

There are other, less passable roads into Avdiivka, but Hrushevsky is critical. “The intention of the Russian aggressors is clear: they first of all want to establish control over the logistical means of providing our units on the northern flank,” Tarnavskyi wrote. “However, we give an adequate response to the actions of the enemy.”

That “adequate response” could include the deployment of elements of the 3rd Assault Brigade. The unit since December has been in reserve in Kramatorsk, 50 miles north of Avdiivka.

The 2,000-person brigade fought one of the last winning battles of Ukraine’s 2023 offensive and liberated the town of Andriivka, 25 miles north of Avdiivka. The victory earned the year-old brigade an opportunity to rest, retrain, recruit new soldiers and, if rumors are true, re-equip with American-made M-2 fighting vehicles.

“How is February of the 3rd Assault going?” brigade trooper Egor Sugar wrote. “Only in training, and only hardcore. Regular training, range training and active preparation for new attacks against the occupiers continue.”

The slow collapse of Avdiivka’s defenses in recent weeks may have compelled the 3rd Brigade to suspend training and return to the front. That collapse wasn’t inevitable.

When 40,000 Russian troops attacked starting in early October, the Tavriya group of forces did everything right. It dug in inside Avdiivka while reinforcing the city’s northern and southern flanks, respectively with elements of the 47th and 53rd Brigades. It aimed to turn the lowlands around the city into a shooting gallery.

No, the failing defense in Avdiivka was a choice—by Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress. When these lawmakers declined to approve further aid to Ukraine starting in October—coincidentally, around the same time the Russians attacked Avdiivka—the howitzers the 110th Brigade was counting on to turn Avdiivka’s flanks into an artillery kill-zone began to fall silent.

America was, after all, the main supplier of ammunition to Ukraine’s war effort. Ukrainian artillery quickly went from matching Russian artillery’s firepower to firing just a fifth as many shells as the Russians do. At the same time, Ukrainian air-defenses also began to run out of ammo.

The Russians sensed an opportunity. “The enemy's aviation has increased the number of sorties per day to support offensive actions in the east of Ukraine, particularly near Avdiivka,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported. “This situation is a consequence of the shortage of anti-aircraft guided missiles in the Ukrainian defense forces.”

Russian bombs rained down on the 110th Brigade’s best fortifications, blasting gaps in interlocking sectors of fire. Taking advantage of bad weather that grounded Ukraine’s drones last week, Russian infantry walked into northern Avdiivka, creeping south until they practically could see Hrushevsky Street.

For an army committed to a mobile defense—trading space for time while inflicting maximum casualties on an attacker—the infantry infiltrations might have triggered a fighting retreat.

After all, if the Ukrainians consider Avdiivka an attrition trap for the Russians, they must quit Avdiivka while they still are killing more Russians than the Russians are killing Ukrainians.

For four months, the Avdiivka garrison may have killed 10 Russians for every soldier it lost. But encirclement by the Russian field armies threatens to erase that attritional advantage.

After all, it has happened before. In May last year, in a grinding battle not dissimilar to that in Avdiivka, a Ukrainian garrison held out for months in the ruins of the eastern city of Bakhmut.

The Ukrainians killed as many as 10 Russians for ever person they lost—until the Russians traded blood for ground and pinched the city’s supply lines. “Once Russian forces managed to seize Ukrainian flanks and disrupt supply routes, the casualty rates almost equaled,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained.

Guess who was in charge of the Bakhmut fight? That’s right—Syrskyi.

What happens next in Avdiivka is anyone’s guess. If indeed the 3rd Assault Brigade has deployed to the city, expect counterattacks targeting the Russian positions near Hrushevsky Street.

But don’t expect the Ukrainians suddenly to find a lot of spare ammo lying around. Anticipating a long period of deepening American isolationism and authoritarianism, European countries are investing more in their own militaries—and that means spending more on the production of artillery shells and missiles.

It could take many months for any of those munitions to make their way to Ukraine, however. So unless Republicans in the United States relent, and the USA somehow can speed fresh aid to Avdiivka, the 110th Brigade and any units reinforcing it will continue drawing down their rapidly-emptying arsenals.

When there’s no more ammo, it won’t matter whether there’s one Ukrainian brigade in Avdiivka or two. And Ukrainian commanders’ decision to reinforce the city will, at best, be moot.

At worst, it could result in a bloodbath for Ukrainian troops as they try to flee west out of a city they no longer can defend.