Ukraine

Ukraine-Russia war: Since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, fighting has raged there, with Moscow’s forces appearing to make progress this week following months of near-stalled negotiations.

Here are the latest Ukraine war updates:

• In Russia’s greatest win since Bakhmut fell in May of last year, Ukrainian forces have left the eastern town of Avdiivka.
• Additionally, Russia has been attacking communities in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine gained some ground during its counteroffensive in 2023.
• The Caesar Kunikov amphibious ship was sunk off the shore of Russian-occupied Crimea, according to recent claims made by Ukraine, which has continued its strikes against the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

Russia Captures Avdiivka

To allow Kyiv to resupply its forces in Avdiivka, a strategically important town in the east that had been under siege by Russian forces for months, Ukraine withdrew its troops from the area.

Moscow has been attacking the town, which could have served as a conduit for Ukraine to reach the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, nonstop since last October.

Since 2014, when rebels supported by Russia captured major portions of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk areas, Avdiivka has become a battleground town.

Avdiivka had a pre-war population of about 30,000, practically all of whom have since departed, and the town has suffered near-total destruction.

Since Russian forces took control of the neighboring town of Bakhmut in May 2023, this collapse is the largest shift on the more than 1,000-kilometer (620 mi) battle line. Along the front line, Bakhmut and the vicinity of Robotyne and Krynky to the south continue to be hot spots.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated that it was “likely that Russian forces lack the combat effectiveness to immediately exploit the capture of Avdiivka,” despite Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hailing it as an “important victory.”

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky declared that the withdrawal was necessary to save the lives of the soldiers and placed the responsibility on the faltering Western arms shipments.

For Ukraine to be able to continue fighting Russia, a far more powerful military with an excess of artillery ammunition, it is vitally dependent on weaponry supplies from the US and other Western partners.

Battle for Bakhmut

Bakhmut has endured some of the heaviest fighting of the war and, although Ukraine gained some ground in the surrounding areas over the summer, recent assessments by US-based analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggest Russian forces have made advances around the city.

Flashpoints in the south

Russia has also made slow progress further south near the villages of Robotyne and Verbove in Zaporizhzhia – an area where Ukraine had seen some success during its counter-offensive in 2023.

When Ukraine retook Robotyne in August it was hoped that its forces would be able to cut the land corridor to Crimea, making Moscow’s supply lines more complicated.

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Ukrainian military claimed earlier this week that Russian forces had attacked their positions in the region several times, but they had always been repelled.

But according to the ISW, the geolocated film showed that Russian forces had just moved to the village’s southern and western edges, and Russian military bloggers were reporting even further success.

In the vicinity of the town of Krynky, around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the city of Kherson, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, it also looks as though Russia has reclaimed some land.

Since Moscow’s soldiers left Kherson a year ago, the river has divided Ukrainian and Russian forces. Ukraine first declared it had made progress in Krynky in mid-November.

The expectation was that Ukraine would be able to utilize it as a base to start moving armored cars and air defense systems across the river, moving it one step closer to invading Crimea, the peninsula that Russia unlawfully acquired in 2014.

On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared that Russian forces had recaptured Krynky. However, according to the ISW, open-source visual evidence as well as reports from Russia and Ukraine indicated that Ukrainian forces still held a limited presence in the region.

Attacks on Russia’s fleet

Meanwhile, Ukraine has maintained its attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, including the apparent sinking of the amphibious ship, the Caesar Kunikov, off the coast of Crimea.

Ukraine’s intelligence directorate released a video of what it said were Magura V5 sea drones striking the ship near the town of Alupka.

There was no confirmation from Ukraine Russia war navy that the Caesar Kunikov had been sunk in the Black Sea, merely that six Ukrainian drones had been destroyed. The Kremlin has also refused to comment on the incident.

However, the UK MoD notes it would be the third such vessel, which is used to provide logistical support to the fleet and the wider war effort in Ukraine, to be destroyed in Ukrainian strikes.

“Ukraine’s ingenuity has highly likely deterred Russia from operating freely in the western Black Sea and enabled Ukraine to seize the maritime momentum from Russia,” it adds.

Two days later pro-Russian military bloggers reported that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet Admiral Viktor Sokolov had been replaced by Vice-Admiral Sergei Pinchuka.

They speculated that this may have been a result of Ukraine’s successes, although it is possible that Sokolov was killed in a strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol in September.

Ukraine has also succeeded in shooting down several Russian planes in recent weeks – including a Su-34 and a Su-35S in eastern Ukraine on Monday.

Two years of fighting

Russia’s invasion began with dozens of missile strikes on cities all over Ukraine before dawn on 24 February 2022.

Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine Russia war and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv.

Russian forces were bombarding Kharkiv, and they had taken territory in the east and south as far as Kherson and surrounded the port city of Mariupol.

However, they encountered fierce resistance from the Ukrainians practically everywhere and had significant logistical issues with unmotivated Ukraine Russia war troops who were low on supplies of food, drink, and ammunition.

Western-supplied weaponry, such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved to be extremely effective against the Russian advance, was also swiftly deployed by Ukrainian forces.

By October 2022, things had drastically shifted, as Russia had entirely withdrawn from the north after failing to seize Kyiv. Not much has changed in the real world since then.