Ukraine troops leave embattled eastern town

BBC News:

Ukraine’s military says it has withdrawn its troops from Avdiivka – the key eastern town for months besieged by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said he acted “to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of service personnel”.

He added that the troops were moved to “more favourable lines”.

His deputy said the Russians had a huge artillery advantage, and were advancing “on the corpses of their own soldiers”.

Avdiivka – a gateway to the Russian-seized city of Donetsk – has been engulfed in fierce fighting for months, and is now almost completely destroyed.

It has been a battlefield town since 2014, when Russian-backed fighters seized large swathes of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The fall of Avdiivka marks the biggest change on the more than 1,000km-long (620-mile) front line since Russian troops seized the nearby town of Bakhmut in May 2023.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.