Avdiivka Photo Shows Glimpse of 'Hundreds' of Ruined Russian Vehicles

A new photograph shared by the Ukrainian military appears to show a snapshot of a slew of Russian military vehicles littering the fields around the embattled Donetsk town of Avdiivka after three months of bitter fighting for the strategic settlement.

There are "hundreds of units of knocked-out Russian equipment" along the front line close to the town northwest of the regional capital, Donetsk City, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukraine's Tavria grouping of forces covering Avdiivka, said in a post to Telegram on Thursday. The Ukrainian commander also shared a photo showing three wrecked vehicles coated in snow.

Russia lost four tanks along that section of the frontline in the past 24 hours, Tarnavskyi said.

Newsweek could not independently verify the image, nor Tarnavskyi's tally of Russian losses. The Russian Defense Ministry has been approached for comment via email.

Russia launched its offensive around Avdiivka three months ago, triggering thousands of deaths on both sides just ahead of the grueling winter season setting in across Ukraine. Western analysts were initially optimistic about Avdiivka holding out and Ukrainian defenses remaining unbreached. But almost daily, Moscow has been inching further around the industrial settlement.

There were no confirmed changes to the frontline as of Wednesday, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said in its latest assessment.

In nearly two years of war, Russia's military has lost huge chunks of its pre-war armored vehicle and tank fleets. It is very difficult to gain an accurate picture of just how many armored vehicles and tanks have been damaged, destroyed, captured or abandoned.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian military said Russia had lost 12 tanks in the past day, bringing its total tank losses since February 2022 to 6,050. Moscow also lost 22 armored personnel vehicles in the past 24 hours, Kyiv said, updating its tally to 11,238.

In early November, Britain's armed forces minister, James Heappey, told U.K. lawmakers that Russia had lost more than 7,117 armored vehicles, including nearly 2,475 main battle tanks.

Russian vehicle losses quickly became a defining part of the Kremlin's attack on Avdiivka. Between Russia launching its offensive on the town on October 10 and November 28, Moscow lost more than 211 vehicles around Avdiivka, according to satellite imagery analysis by the Frontelligence Insight project. The British Defense Ministry has also suggested that Russia lost around 200 armored vehicles in the first three weeks of the offensive on Avdiivka.

"Defending the city is worthwhile as long as we exhaust the Russians," Dmytro Lazutkin, spokesperson for Ukraine's 47th Brigade fighting around Avdiivka, told Newsweek in mid-December.

Russian forces have switched to infantry-led attacks around Avdiivka to "conserve armored vehicles following the first two waves of assaults on the settlement," the Institute for the Study of War said in mid-December.

Clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces southwest of Avdiivka, around the evacuated, destroyed settlement of Marinka, have also taken their toll on Russia's—and Ukraine's—resources.

On Monday, Ukraine's airborne forces said a Ukrainian paratrooper had used a Javelin anti-tank missile to take out four Russian armored vehicles in a single battle, thwarting the Russian operation. Yaroslav Chepurny, spokesperson for the 79th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, told Newsweek on Wednesday that the destruction of the slew of Russian armored vehicles took place around Marinka.

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