Enemy bypass Bakhmut, concentrating forces around Avdiivka and Maryinka

Serhiy Zgurets, director of the information and consulting company Defense Express said this on the air of the Espreso TV channel

We can see the dynamics of the last five months and the pace of advancement of Russian units, where they developed success around Popasna and moved towards Bakhmut. But the situation around Bakhmut remains difficult because the advance there is 100-200 meters. And we have examples where last week our counterattack in one day took back positions that Russians had been trying to gnaw for months. Bakhmut holds on despite all the difficulties. Now they try to bypass Bakhmut, concentrating forces around Avdiivka and Maryinka. Now they have gone in a different direction because there is no success in Bakhmut, so they try to find weak points around Avdiivka and Maryinka.

In the area of ​​Pisky, Russians managed to advance 2 km to the southern outskirts of Vodyane and Opytne. Russian offensive on Opytne and Vodyane is one of the directions connected with their attempt to encircle Avdiivka.

Opytne and Vodyane are the southern direction of attack relative to Avdiivka, and Kamianka district is the northern direction of Russian efforts. If they advance there, they have no chance to advance because there is another line of defense there. They do not have enough strength for this. And Russian efforts related to Maryinka and movement to Kurakhove, as well as attempts to surround Avdiivka, are efforts of the Russian army to withdraw as many of the Ukrainian forces as possible because the Ukrainian Armed Forces have success in Kherson region and in the Svatove-Kreminna area.

To the south of Donetsk, in Vuhlehirsk district, Russian army conducted series of attacks on wide section of the front of more than 30 km, and they also unsuccessfully tried to occupy Pavlivka. Pavlivka is one of the directions of traffic on Kurakhove. Russians try to launch an attack on Pavlivka, Vugledar and further on Kurakhove. And Kurakhove is a settlement they are interested in because there is another transport junction there. On the approaches to Pavlivka, Russians brought up a significant amount of artillery, so this settlement has already been significantly destroyed. But now they stopped at the southern approaches to Pavlivka and it will be extremely difficult for them to move on.

These Russian actions in the direction of Kurakhove are a way to tie up part of Ukrainian forces.

We want to have an advantage in the number of personnel, equipment, and artillery, but we hope for a much larger number of artillery because Russians do not count on losses now. This is a new nuance that arose after the appearance of mobs, which in the form of human shields constantly rush to our positions, and this is a significant burden on our infantry and artillery. We have to combine means of defeat, military tricks, and the ability to destroy Russian positions much more actively than they have time to build new formats of offensive units.