INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ukraine's withdrawal from the city of Avdiivka hands Vladimir Putin a major symbolic victory before Russia's presidential election in March
and exposes Kyiv's critical shortages of weapons and soldiers.Symbol of Ukrainian resistanceAvdiivka, a small industrial city in the eastern
Donbas region, has been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression since 2014.It is close to the city of Donetsk, which
pro-Russian separatists control as their capital and whose Moscow-backed fighters briefly took power in July 2014 before Ukrainian forces
regained control.The city is now mostly destroyed and abandoned, with the vast majority of its pre-war population of around 34,000 having
fled.Avdiivka "has been a symbol of Ukraine's battlefield resolve and Russia's military failures," said analyst Ivan Klyszcz of the
Estonia-based International Center for Defense and Security.But it is "strategically insignificant," added Gustav Gressel, a senior policy
fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations."It would have been a good foot in the door for a Ukrainian offensive" on Donetsk city,
but Ukraine cannot conduct such an offensive for at least two years and it made "no sense to sacrifice soldiers now," he said.For Vladimir
Putin, whose re-election as Russian president in March is all but assured with the opposition muzzled or exiled, Avdiivka is a "significant
victory," according to the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War.Unfavorable odds for UkraineA spokesman for one of Ukraine's top
military units said the months-long battle for Avdiivka was even tougher than the bloody fighting in Bakhmut, another industrial eastern
city that Russian paramilitary group Wagner claimed to have captured in May 2023.Oleksandr Borodin of Ukraine's third assault brigade
pointed to Russia's massive deployment of heavy equipment and air power, with intense bombardment raining down on Ukrainian positions in
recent days.Russia carried out tank attacks with infantry using "a large number" of armored personnel carriers, Soviet-era combat vehicles,
planes and drones, whereas Wagner mostly sent men into the Bakhmut front line, he said before Ukraine's withdrawal.Although Avdiivka's
defenses had been strengthened since 2014 and inflicted heavy losses since October, Russian forces managed to "infiltrate into the city
itself" in mid-January, said Gressel.In the past two weeks, Ukrainian communication lines were cut or endangered, while some areas faced
attacks from all sides, he added.The delivery of Western F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine "take much too long" and Kyiv's forces were running
short of air-to-air missiles and artillery ammunition, undermining the defense of Avdiivka, Gressel said.Retreat to hold outPulling out of
Avdiivka was the right decision to avoid being surrounded and save as many lives as possible, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told
the Munich Security Conference on Saturday."This does not mean that people retreated some kilometers and Russia captured something, it did
not capture anything," he added.The retreat is unsurprising because Russia had nearly surrounded Avdiivka and the destruction of units would
have been "catastrophic" for Ukraine, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."The
The retreat will not be easy," he warned.Ukrainian forces have been ordered to set up new defensive lines to the west and southwest of
Avdiivka and the battle is far from over.It remains to be seen whether Ukraine can defend the new line and if Russia has enough reserves to
continue the offensive and make another breakthrough, said Philippe Gros of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.According to a
European military source, Ukraine is going on the defensive to hold out in the long term, fend off local Russian attacks and avoid
squandering its capacities while waiting for fresh Western aid, especially from the United States.
