The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called the decision of the Ukrainian military to withdraw from Avdiyivka correct, and also noted that the lack of supplies of Western weapons forced Ukraine to resort to such actions. He stated this on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference held in Germany.
According to him, the main task of Ukraine is to save the lives of its soldiers.
"It is an absolutely logical, fair and professional decision to save as many Ukrainians as possible," he said.
At the same time, Zelenskyi denied the existence of significant territorial gains of Russia.
"The decision to move to other frontiers does not mean that people have moved a few kilometers and Russia has captured something. She did not capture anything," the president said.
According to him, Russia tried to "do something" in the east of Ukraine for two years - but all it did was destroy several small villages and towns.
"But the biggest thing they destroyed is our life," Zelenskyy added.
He also spoke about the fact that the Russians threw a lot of resources into the conquest of Avdiivka and lost many of their soldiers there.
"Since October, they attacked this unfortunate Avdiyivka with all the weapons, all the power they had, just thousands of their soldiers died, tens of thousands - this is what Russia has achieved," the president said, adding that the Ukrainian military constantly fulfills the task of exhausting the Russian army.
At the same time, according to him, Ukrainian losses in Avdiivka compared to Russian losses were one to seven.
But since Ukraine, unlike Russia, values the lives of its soldiers, leaving Avdiivka in order to save their lives was the right decision, Zelenskyy said.
After that, he added, the Ukrainian military will recover and wait for the appropriate weapons, "of which there were simply not enough."
"Our actions are limited only by the sufficiency and range of our means of destruction, but this does not depend on us. And the situation in Avdiivka confirms this, Zelenskyy said. "Unfortunately, keeping Ukraine in an artificial shortage of weapons, in particular in the shortage of artillery and long-range weapons, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of hostilities."
"There are no long-range weapons. Russia has it, but we have very little - that's all the truth. Therefore, our main weapon today is our soldiers, people, and we count on the support of our partners," the president added.
He noted that Ukraine is counting on what it agreed with its partners - namely, the opportunity to unblock the sky, where the Russian Federation currently has an advantage.
According to him, the Ukrainians began to receive air defense systems, and he is grateful to the partners for this - but there are too few of them to advance quickly.
"This is an unfair war in general, but it is also unfair from the point of view of superiority: if you have artillery up to 20 km, and Russia has artillery of 40 km, this is your answer," Zelenskyy said.
"A living person fights with artillery - an unjust and unmodern ideology of war," he added.
At the same time, the president noted that Ukraine has also begun to develop its own technologies and the production of drones.
"We will surprise them (Russians - Ed.) this year with drone systems and EW systems," Zelenskyy said.
The president also noted that Ukraine can win the war, while Russia and Putin must lose.
"Putin has only two options ahead of him - to be on the bench as a defendant in The Hague or to be killed by one of his henchmen who are now killing for him," Zelensky said and directly accused the Russian president of killing the oppositionist Oleksii Navalny, whose death in the colony the Russian authorities reported on Friday.
"After the murder of Alexei Navalny, it is absurd to perceive Putin as the supposedly legitimate head of the Russian state. He is a thug who maintains power through corruption and violence," he added.
Withdrawal of troops from Avdiivka
PHOTO AUTHOR, KOSTYANTYN AND VLADA LIBEROVA/GETTY IMAGES
Ukrainian troops left Avdiyivka to avoid encirclement and moved to new defense lines, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said the day before.
"Based on the operational situation around Avdiyivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines," he said.
According to Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Tavriya OTU, the Ukrainian military "in accordance with the received order, left Avdiyivka to pre-prepared positions."
"The encirclement is not allowed, the personnel has been withdrawn, our soldiers have taken up defense at the designated boundaries," Tarnavskyi said.
However, he later added that some Ukrainian soldiers were captured by the Russians.
"At the final stage of the operation, under the pressure of the overwhelming enemy forces, a number of Ukrainian servicemen were captured," Tarnavskyi wrote, adding that Ukraine will turn to international humanitarian organizations and intermediary countries to ensure humane treatment of prisoners of war.
The great bloody battle for Avdiivka lasted four months. In October 2023, the Russians launched a large-scale offensive on Avdiivka. The defense forces of Ukraine defended themselves for a long time, at the end of January, experts spoke about the critical situation and the need to withdraw the garrison, but this did not happen then.
At the beginning of February, the situation became critical and the Russians almost succeeded in cutting off the supply routes for the defenders of the city.
Avdiivka is a small industrial town, from where it is very close to Donetsk, which was captured by pro-Russian militants almost 10 years ago - in the spring of 2014.
All these years, Avdiivka was held by Ukrainian troops, who built strong defensive fortifications there. Despite its proximity to the front line, the city has been developing and growing economically in recent years.
A full-scale war changed everything. The local factory stopped, most of the residents left the city, saving them from the daily destructive bombings. And the city turned into a ruin.
Avdiivka had important political and military significance for both sides of the war. Russia tried to push the Ukrainian troops to a safe distance from the "capital of the DNR".
They also did not hide it in Russia - they wanted to take Avdiyivka before the re-election of President Vladimir Putin in March 2024.
For Ukraine, Avdiivka was important as a major railway junction, a powerful industrial center, and also as a constant potential threat to Donetsk.
The road connecting Donetsk, Horlivka and Luhansk runs just a few kilometers from here. Cutting it would mean significantly complicating the logistics of the enemy's troops.
