“Stay as long as you can” under fire from the Russian Air Force in Avdiyivka, on Ukraine’s eastern front.

Private Oleksandr slows his pace as the booming sound of artillery fire pierces the steely sky of the town of Avdiivka. He raises his hand and stops. His face expresses the most total concentration. A few seconds pass. “they are ours” He assures one last time before stepping over a piece of metal twisted by the explosion. A man with faded blue eyes who goes by the name of Texas, He did not depart from his calm prudence even for a moment. Russian forces for several weeks “Strengthened Attacks”, As he calmly says, he describes a massive enemy effort to capture Avdiivka, a small town on the front line that runs through the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

“It’s been a while since they’ve taken their planes out, but in the last couple of weeks they’ve been doing it more and more regularly.” explain A soldier who has been fighting in this war-torn province for over eight years. On Avdiivka, in addition to conventional artillery, attacks by Kremlin fighter jets are now a daily occurrence. Only on Saturday, March 4, Alexander counted six aerial bombardments. Two during the day, four at night. The craters created by the explosion of rockets fired by aircraft are several meters wide and deep, which adds the final level of destruction.

The situation in Bakhmut is tense

After more than a year of war, the town of 30,000 was nothing but a vast chaos. The avenues, where almost no one dares anymore, are crowded with entire stretches of ruined housing. The buildings are carbon, soaked with impact. A few shadows, the last of the inhabitants, hurriedly sneak in before returning to their shelters.

For several weeks now, Kremlin forces have been concentrating their offensive on eastern Ukraine in hopes of capturing the Donetsk region. Along with Vohledar and Bakhmut, Avdiyivka is one of the cities on the eastern front line where the fighting is most violent. However, the efforts of the Russian army have so far failed to make any significant progress. In Bakhmut, a symbolic city where Russian forces have been relentless since August at the cost of heavy casualties, the situation is still worsening day by day. “The Russians could try to encircle Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian command signaled that it preferred to retreat rather than risk encirclement.”It was assessed on Saturday by a group of American experts at the Institute for the Study of War.