Russian troops launched a major offensive in the Avdiyivka area this week and appear to have made little progress, but Kyiv says its forces are resisting attacks on that front and inflicting heavy losses on enemy equipment.

“Goodbye. We hold our positions. It is the courage and unity of Ukrainians that will decide how this war will end,” Zelenskyy wrote on his social media accounts along with a photo from the scene.

Putin’s troops lost 210 tanks and 50 guns in two days

The head of the city administration, Vitaly Barabash, called the pressure of the Russians “the largest offensive action in our direction since the beginning of the war.”

A large coke chemical plant is located in Avdiivka in the southwest of the Donetsk region. A large part of the city was turned into ruins.

In recent days, Russian actions in the Avdiiv direction have intensified. The Ukrainian military said that over the past two days, Vladimir Putin’s forces have suffered huge losses in equipment, and it seems that the most of them have been recorded on the Avdiyiv Front.

According to the Ukrainians, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Russians lost 1810 soldiers, 76 tanks, 135 other tanks and 50 artillery pieces.

The most expensive Russian assault since the beginning of the war

The authoritative GeoConfirmed account on Platform X indicates that “the Russian offensive in Avdiivka and Makiivka appears to be suffering heavy losses in equipment.”

“Based on the number of images of vehicle losses that have emerged, this could be the costliest Russian attack since the beginning of the war,” the quoted source added.

Another account on Platform X that has been tracking the Russian invasion since its inception, OSINTtechnical, said that Russian equipment losses over the past two days, which were confirmed by images, were roughly equivalent to the losses of a battalion-level tactical group.

The large number of losses of Russian equipment on the Avdiiv front is confirmed by numerous images that appeared on social networks, in particular, a video in which a Russian armored car begins a “kamikaze” assault, but is stopped by a Javelin launcher.

What the Institute for the Study of War says about Avdiivka

The ongoing offensive operations near Avdiivka likely demonstrate the ability of Russian forces to learn and apply tactical lessons from the Ukrainian battlefield, the Institute for the Study of War said, adding that Moscow’s forces suffered “heavy casualties.”

Russian forces launched localized attacks on Avdiivka after intensive artillery preparation of the battlefield on the morning of October 10, and geolocation images from October 10 and 11 confirm that Russian forces advanced southwest of Avdiivka, near Severny, and northwest of Avdiivka, near Stepovoy and Krasnohorivka .

The General Staff of Ukraine reported that groups of Russian battalions numbering up to three battalions, supported by tanks and armored vehicles, intensified offensive actions near Avdiyivka.

Russian sources noted Russia’s advances in the area and highlighted several adaptations that suggest Moscow’s forces are applying lessons learned from operations in southern Ukraine to other areas of the front.

However, these adaptations and successes at the tactical level are unlikely to translate into broader operational and strategic advantages for Russian forces, ISW notes.

Geolocation imagery shows that Russian offensives around Avdiivka are concentrated southwest of Avdiivka, and Russian forces have not completed an operational encirclement of the settlement and will likely have difficulty doing so if that is their intention.

Avdiyivka is also a well-known Ukrainian fortress, well fortified and defended, which will likely make it difficult for Russian forces to get very close or completely capture the city.

• Since March of this year, the Russian army has been trying to capture Avdiivka. Since the beginning of the separatist conflict in Donbas in 2014, the city has been on the front line.