Russia’s assault on Avdiivka has turned the town in eastern Ukraine into an apocalyptic landscape, a senior local official said on Monday, mandating the evacuation of public utility workers who restore basic services and help rescue civilians.
Since the start of the war, Russian forces have repeatedly tried to seize Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk region. But they have redoubled their efforts to capture the town in recent weeks, stepping up bombardment of the city center and outlying villages as part of a broader offensive that has centered on the city of Bakhmut.
The evacuation order to public utility workers and emergency workers, who play a vital role in the aftermath of rocket and missile strikes, underscored the gravity of the situation. Firefighters had already been withdrawn from Avdiivka.
“Avdiivka is becoming more and more like a site from post-apocalyptic movies,” Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the city’s military administration, said in a video posted Monday on the Telegram social messaging app. Mr. Barabash wore a helmet and flak jacket in the video, which showed piles of rubble in the street, shattered apartment blocks and trees blackened by fire. He later said that journalists and aid workers were forbidden from entering the town.
Avdiivka once served as a bedroom community for the large metropolis of Donetsk, before that city was taken over in the separatist war instigated and fueled by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2014. Only 15 miles or so from Donetsk, Avdiivka became a key defensive position, with a contingent of Ukrainian forces dug into trenches built around the ruins of country homes and an old tire factory. Then Mr. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 — and Avdiivka came under heavy assault.
Many buildings have been reduced to rubble and only around 2,000 people remain from the prewar population of around 30,000. In recent days, Russian forces have gained ground around Avdiivka and Ukrainian officials have warned that the town is turning into another Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces have sought to capture by sending waves of lightly trained recruits on near-suicidal attacks.
Bakhmut, which is around 34 miles northeast of Avdiivka, has been the epicenter of Russia’s offensive and the scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting. The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, warned on Monday that “the most intense phase” of the long-running battle for the city was underway.
“The situation is consistently difficult,” General Syrsky said, according to the military media center. “The enemy is suffering significant losses in human resources, weapons and military equipment, but continues to conduct offensive actions.”
It added that General Syrsky had “visited the battlefront to resolve operational problems with the region’s defense.” In recent days, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces said that the situation in the city could be stabilized.
Bakhmut and Avdiivka are two points along a front line that stretches across Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which together are known as Donbas. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made capturing all of Donbas his military’s primary objective.
While Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been subjected to ferocious assaults, Russian forces have continued to shell targets across a broad area in eastern Ukraine.
On Monday, at least two people were killed and 27 others were injured when Russian rockets hit homes and government buildings in the Donetsk region town of Sloviansk, according to the head of the regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko. Video he posted on Telegram of the incident, which could not be independently verified, showed burning cars and damaged houses.
In a separate incident, two rockets destroyed an orphanage in the town of Druzhkivka, he said in a Telegram post, adding that there were no casualties in that attack.
