JRL NEWSWATCH: “Both Sides Pay a Bloody Price for Coveted Ukrainian City” – New York Times
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“The fight for the battered city of Avdiivka has emerged this fall as the fiercest battle of the war. Waves of Russian assaults have not broken through so far.”
“… [T]wo [city] landmarks have been the focus of furious fighting since Oct. 10 as thousands of Russian troops began a major new offensive in eastern Ukraine to seize [long-coveted] Avdiivka [in] … the [Donbas] coal mining region …. [W]ithin days this battle … was shaping up to be perhaps the costliest of the war for Russia. Ukrainian artillery destroyed Russian armored columns … and drones armed with explosives [reportedly] struck down [Russian] infantry … advanc[ing] on foot …. Waves of Russian soldiers scal[ing] the industrial waste heap … [repeatedly] were shredded by Ukrainian artillery. Nearly three weeks i[later] … the Russian army has failed to make [a desired] swift breakthrough …. [reportedly while] los[ing] hundreds of men and more than 100 armored vehicles and tanks … [or] twice that amount by Ukrainian accounts. … [Russia] has advanced barely a mile [in the main thrust of the attacks], … in other places only a few hundred yards. … [B]oth sides have found in … heavy artillery battles [across the span of the war that] a mechanized assault against a strong defensive line is always a brutal experience. The Ukrainians are taking heavy casualties, too ….”