Russians pound Avdeevka with heavy bombs. Can the awaited Russian offensive be approaching?
Today’s online issue of Russia’s most important daily newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta carries an article from the Telegram Channel of the portal Russkaya vesna that is very important for anyone who wants to see why the application of1.5 ton reengineered, guided bombs to the war theater suggests the start of a new stage of the war that, for once, the Russians, not the Americans, are initiating.
The headline reads “RF Army has delivered a blow of previously unseen might against the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)”. What they are describing is an aerial bombing of Avdeevka, the heavily fortified Ukrainian town 14 kilometers away from Donetsk city, which is an urban center of more than a million inhabitants and capital of the Donbas oblast (region) of the same name. Donetsk city has been struck by missiles and artillery shells launched from Avdeevka on a daily basis from the time before the Special Military Operation, and with ever greater intensity during the SMO. Video images of destroyed homes and apartment buildings have appeared on Russian evening news together casualty figures and the testimony of victims.
The attack on Avdeevka came early in the morning when the Ukrainians were attempting to carry out a rotation of their troops. Eyewitnesses said that “the earth shook” in the whole area as a result of the bombing.
The question many Russians have had was why no action was taken previously to destroy Avdeevka and end the bloodshed on Russian controlled land. There was the hypothesis that taking Avdeevka by storm would have been as costly in the lives of Russian soldiers as Bakhmut or Mariupol. The Ukrainians have been using the partly destroyed coking coal and chemicals factory there as a fortress.
There was the hypothesis that the daily images of Ukrainian inflicted death and misery in Donetsk city was useful to consolidate Russian public opinion for continuation of the war. And now there is the hypothesis that the heavy bombs now being deployed to eradicate Ukrainian positions in Avdeevka were not yet available in the numbers needed to do the job there and elsewhere behind Ukrainian lines.
It is also possible that the Russians were holding back, prolonging the war of attrition to achieve one of their primary goals of the SMO, namely to “demilitarize” Ukraine by allowing Kiev to destroy its army reserves in the so-called spring-summer counter-offensive by throwing men and equipment against the inpenetrable Surovikin lines of defense in the southeast before moving on to a new phase in the war leading to Ukrainian capitulation. The bombing of Avdeevka today, like the reported destruction of a major Ukrainian command post by 1.5 ton bombs a couple of days ago, would suggest the “softening up” phase before a major ground offensive.
In any case, with or without a ground offensive, the Russians’ move to aerial bombing with 1.5 ton and possibly soon with 5 ton guided bombs signifies a change which Kiev, London and Washington seem not to have anticipated. It is a campaign that can easily be continued during the rainy season and roadless conditions of late autumn in Ukraine which Western commentators had assumed would force the sides to slow the war effort, giving Washington the opportunity to restock Ukraine with weapons, advisers and so on in preparation of renewed military activity in the spring. The West can now put paid to that scenario, it would seem.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023