A new video shared by the Ukrainian military on social media shows them retreating on foot from a besieged city engulfed in enemy fire during the evacuation.

A video shared by fighters of the 110th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shows them preparing to withdraw from the city, which the Russians surrounded on three sides in the final days of the assault that began last October.

The evacuation, carried out during an apparent lull in the fighting, appears to have been directed by a platoon or fire team commander, who filmed the sequence on a shoulder-mounted camera.

“So we’re leaving, guys? Do as I do,” he declares at one point, encouraging his subordinates.

At some point (minute 01:49), the soldiers ask over the radio stations “how are you?”. “We’re going slowly, they’re shooting,” the commander replies.

“Tank!” he exclaims after a few seconds, though it’s unclear if he’s referring to the sounds of gunfire or the destroyed car in their field of vision. But the soldiers quickly calm down when they realize that this is the Bradley of the Ukrainian army.

Moments of confusion when leaving Avdiivka

“Something is wrong, Oduvane! Mom, sit down!” says the commander, the soldiers seem unsure of the direction of their lines, where they are retreating. “It’s somewhere over there, come on. We’ll get there,” he says a little later.

However, soon Ukrainian soldiers come under enemy fire and fall to the ground. “God help!” the commander exclaims. Although filming stops soon after, her appearance shows that the Ukrainian military has finally reached its limits.

As Dmytro, the founder of the well-known website War Translated, notes, although the withdrawal was somewhat chaotic, the Ukrainian military was constantly helped by radio stations.

Another video released by Ukrainian forces earlier this week captured heavy fighting in some areas of the city during the withdrawal, showing an MRAP MaxxPro vehicle, which the Ukrainian military received from the US, racing towards Avdiivka to evacuate defenders.

Last Saturday, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, said that the decision to withdraw troops from Avdiyivka was “correct” and was made to preserve the lives of the defenders.

According to Ukrainian estimates, 17,000 Russian soldiers died near Avdiivka

“It was a professional decision to save as many lives as possible (…) it was the right decision,” the President of Ukraine emphasized at the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany.

The new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces, General Oleksandr Sirskyi, ordered to avoid the encirclement, which was the biggest change on the front since the capture of the city of Bakhmut by Russian forces last May.

In a video report broadcast by Russian television, it can be seen that the city was completely destroyed during the fighting, as were Bakhmut, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities.

The other day, the ambassador of Ukraine to Romania, Ihor Prokopchuk, said that the Ukrainian military retreated also because they ran out of ammunition and a sufficient amount of combat equipment.

“I noticed how [rușilor] they do not care about human lives, because only in Avdiivka did they suffer huge human losses. According to our estimates, they lost more than 47,000 soldiers in just these four months of offensive from October 10 to February 17. Of them, more than 17,000 were killed in battle,” he said in a discussion with the press, in which HotNews.ro also participated.

Russian military blogger Andriy Morozov spoke about 16,000 soldiers lost near Avdiivka. A few days after the report was released, he committed suicide, blaming the pressure on him.

Follow the latest events of the 730th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.