KYIV, UKRAINE – Russian forces stepped up attacks in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, Moscow and Kiev said, as they fight to make elusive territorial gains before the end of the year.

Although the front lines have barely shifted in 2023, fighting remains intense, with the nearly encircled industrial city of Avdiivka the latest major flashpoint.

Russia launched a fresh attempt to take the war-torn city last month and analysts say Moscow forces have made gradual progress, albeit with huge human losses.

“The enemy has redoubled its artillery fire and air strikes. He has also increased attacks by ground forces and is using armored vehicles,” said Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army.

Better weather conditions – after strong storms in southern Ukraine and Russia earlier this week – have allowed Russian forces to step up attacks and use drones again, he said.

Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the Ukrainian commander in charge of the area, also said Russia had “significantly increased” its activities around Avdiivka.

He said Russian forces carried out nearly 20 airstrikes, fired four missiles, threw 56 waves of attacks on his forces and fired more than 1,000 artillery shells.

WAIT
Avdiivka is located in a strategically important location on the Russian front line in the Donetsk region. Russian troops surround the city on almost three sides.

Defenses on its southern edge lie just five kilometers (3 miles) north of the city of Donetsk, capital of a region Moscow reportedly annexed last year.

Ukraine has so far repelled Russian bombardment and still controls an eight-kilometer-wide strip of land – and a key supply route – stretching northwest from Avdiivka.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian Tarnavsky said his troops were “holding the line firmly along the Avdiivka front.”

Amid the resistance, Russian casualties mount around the city.

British intelligence said the last few weeks had “probably seen some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far.”

But an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Wednesday that Moscow was prepared to send soldiers to war “unlimited.”

“Russia still has unlimited human resources, which it recklessly uses to carry out so-called ‘human wave attacks.’ They prefer to use people rather than machines,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in a social media post.

About 50 kilometers (30 miles) north, the Russian military separately claimed it had taken control of Khromove, a small village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

“Troops, supported by air and artillery fire, improved their positions along the front line and liberated the village of Artemovskoye,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily news conference, referring to the village by an earlier version of its name.

AFP was unable to verify either side’s claims.

Both Moscow and Kiev also said they shot down enemy drones and missiles overnight.

Ukraine is bracing for Russia to step up attacks on its energy infrastructure, a repeat of Moscow’s tactics last winter that left millions of people without power or heating for hours in subzero temperatures.

State energy company Ukrenergo reported a power shortage on Wednesday as it struggled to reconnect thousands of villages to the grid following severe weather earlier this week.

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down all 21 drones and two of the three X-59 guided missiles that Russia fired into its territory overnight.

The third rocket did not reach its target, it said.

Poison plot
Russia said it shot down a Ukrainian drone flying toward the capital Moscow and another over the southern Rostov region, the military headquarters of its invasion.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials reported that a 68-year-old man was killed in a Russian grenade attack on the suburbs of the southern city of Kherson during the day.

The Kremlin also responded Wednesday to Ukrainian claims that Moscow poisoned the wife of its military intelligence chief.

Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukrainian spymaster Kyrylo Budanov, was hospitalized with heavy metal poisoning in what intelligence officials in Kiev said was a brazen assassination attempt.

“Ukraine blames Russia for everything. Even for their own existence, it seems to me,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday in response to the allegations.

On the diplomatic front, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a NATO meeting on Wednesday that Washington and its allies maintained their support for Ukraine, while doubts about the West’s commitment to continue supporting Kiev grew as the war continued Apparently the stalemate is at a low point.