Ukraine War Footage Shows One of Russia's 'Largest Assaults' on Avdiivka

New footage appears to show one of Russia's "largest assaults" on Avdiivka during the early stages of Moscow's onslaught on the embattled Donetsk town, as Russian troops make slow advances along the hundreds of miles of frontline snaking through Ukraine.

In a video posted by Ukraine's 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade on Saturday, smoke from several sources covers the landscape as airborne drones record what appear to be engagements between Ukrainian and Russian forces. The footage was filmed in late October 2023, the brigade said.

The video shows what appears to be a column of Russian vehicles moving across a field, with one of the vehicles hitting a landmine. Russian fighters approach after the initial vehicles stop following the mine's detonation, and Ukrainian fighters start to engage the Russian troops, the brigade said.

Newsweek could not independently verify the footage, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Russia launched its offensive around Avdiivka more than three months ago, resulting in thousands of deaths on both sides just ahead of the grueling winter season.

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.

The advances around Avdiivka have come at a high cost for the Kremlin's forces. 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.

Russian forces then switched to infantry-led attacks to "conserve armored vehicles following the first two waves of assaults on the settlement," the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said in mid-December.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said its southern grouping of forces had repelled two attacks by Ukrainian assault groups, including from the country's 47th Mechanized Brigade along the front line in Donetsk.

Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade is deployed around Avdiivka, a spokesperson for the brigade previously confirmed to Newsweek. The 47th operates all of the U.S-supplied Bradley Fighting Vehicles donated to Ukraine, and said earlier this week that footage showing a Bradley firing on an advanced Russian tank was filmed by the brigade near Stepove, just northwest of Avdiivka.

On Sunday, Ukraine's military said it had repelled 11 Russian attacks around Avdiivka in the past 24 hours.

"Assaults are daily," Ukraine's 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade said in a caption to the video posted on Saturday.

Capturing Avdiivka would allow Moscow to greatly expand its logistical operations, jeopardize Ukraine's operations against Russian positions in Donetsk City and could pave Russia's path to Kostyantynivka—a "quite important stronghold," former Ukrainian army colonel Serhiy Hrabsky told Newsweek in late December.

Fighting has been heaviest around Avdiivka, but in recent days, Ukraine has reported intensified clashes around the destroyed town of Bakhmut—which Russia captured in May 2023—and up to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.

On Saturday, the ISW think tank said geolocated footage indicated Russia had captured the small Kharkiv settlement of Krokhmalne, just over 12 miles northwest of Svatove. Ukraine then confirmed on Sunday that Russia had claimed the settlement.

Kyiv had controlled Krokhmalne since 2022 after Ukraine's first sweeping counteroffensive, Ukrainian Ground Forces Command Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fito said, according to Ukrainian media.

But Fito downplayed the importance of the settlement, saying just 45 people had resided in the village before full-scale war broke out in 2022. Ukrainian forces are now "preventing the enemy from advancing farther," he added.

The Ukrainian retreat from Krokhmalne does not change the general operational situation along this section of the frontline in eastern Ukraine, Hrabsky told Newsweek on Sunday.

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