Smoke rises above the area of Avdiivka town in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, as seen from Yasynuvata (Yasinovataya) in the Donetsk region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on October 13, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Kyiv reported “heated” fighting around its eastern city of Avdiivka on Saturday, saying Russian forces had “not stopped assaulting” the symbolic industrial hub for days in their attempt to surround it.

Ukraine last week said Russia had stepped up assaults on the frontline city, which lies just 15 km from Moscow-held Donetsk.

Avdiivka has been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance since 2014, after it briefly fell to Russian-backed separatists.

Russian forces now control territory to the east, north and south of Avdiivka.

“For the fifth day already, the enemy has not stopped either assaulting or shelling positions around the city,” Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the city, said on Ukrainian television.

“It is very heated, very heated,” he said of the fighting.

“They are trying to surround the city,” Barabash added, claiming that Moscow was deploying “more new forces” to the area.

He described intense battles: “There is certainly no silence there at all. Shooting battles continue, both from the north and from the south of the city.”

Kyiv’s Interior Ministry said Russian shelling had “destroyed” a five-storey building in the city, saying it believed a man in his sixties was under the rubble but that it was “impossible to retrieve the body.”

It urged residents still in Avdiivka to evacuate.

Some 1,600 civilians are believed to be in the city, which had a pre-war population of 31,000.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Kyiv was holding its ground in Avdiivka, but Moscow claimed it had improved its positions there.

Ukraine also said Saturday that a Russian attack killed an 11-year-old boy in the eastern village of Bagatyr, also in the Donetsk region, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Avdiivka.

“The boy turned 11 just two days ago,” Ukrainian police said in a statement.

It said his 31-year-old mother and younger brother were wounded and taken to hospital following the attack, which damaged around 20 homes, a church and a school.

Russia’s intensified assault on Avdiivka has come after months of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has been slower than expected.

Russia meanwhile said it had “repelled enemy attacks” in several villages in eastern Ukraine, including in Andriivka — an eastern village that Kyiv has claimed it recaptured but Russia says it controls.

Smoke rises from the area in the direction of Avdiivka in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, as seen from Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, October 11, 2023.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Ukraine’s armed forces said Thursday they were withstanding Russian attacks on the eastern town of Avdiivka, after Moscow said it had improved its position there.

The Donbas town is symbolically and strategically important to Kyiv. It is close to the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, seized by separatist forces in 2014.

“Our defenders are courageously holding the defence: they have repelled more than 10 enemy attacks in the Avdiivka area,” Andriy Kovalev, spokesman of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in televised comments.

Russia’s defence ministry on Wednesday said that its forces had improved their position close to Avdiivka, which had around 31,000 inhabitants before the war and is dominated by a huge coke plant.

Avdiivka’s mayor, Vitaliy Barabash said on television: “We withstood everything, we held our positions, all the attacks were repulsed. In some places (we) even tried to counterattack.”

The mayor said the situation there was “very tense”, calling it the “largest offensive” on Avdiivka since last year’s full-scale invasion.

“For the third day, the fighting around the town has not subsided, with shelling both on positions and on the town itself,” the mayor said, adding that a missile attack hit the town overnight.

The coke plant, currently mothballed, is “constantly under fire from rockets and artillery”, Barabash said.

An influential pro-Russian Telegram channel, Rybar, wrote that Russian forces had captured an important high point, a slag heap north of the town.

The channel also said that Russian forces had entered the village of Stepove northwest of Avdiivka and that there was fighting there, while Ukraine said it had repelled attacks east of the village.

Military analysts reported that Russia appeared to have suffered significant losses of equipment, based on images and videos of the area.

Avdiivka, an industrial hub, has been fought over since 2014, when it was briefly captured by Russian-backed separatists. It now has no intact buildings, mains water or electricity.