The overwhelming number of Russian troops expendable and low ammo IS waring down some of the fight in Ukraine….
This is the sitaution around Avdiivika….
Russia and Ukraine keep bombing each other….
Russian forces continue to make small but rapid gains outside of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, attributable in part to dwindling Ukrainian ammunition and declining Western aid.
But there’s another reason the Kremlin’s troops are advancing in the area: poor Ukrainian defenses.
Sparse, rudimentary trench lines populate the area west of Avdiivka that Ukraine is trying to defend, according to a Times review of imagery by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company. These trench lines lack many of the additional fortifications that could help slow Russian tanks and help defend major roads and important terrain.
Avdiivka became the site of a fierce standoff over the last nine months, emerging as one of the bloodiest battles of the war. When Russia captured the city on Feb. 17, its first major gain since last May, the Ukrainian Army claimed it had secured defensive lines outside the city.
But Russian troops have captured three villages to the west of Avdiivka in the span of a week, and they are contesting at least one other.
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The mother and mother-in-law of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were among mourners who brought flowers to his grave in Moscow on Saturday. It comes a day after thousands turned his funeral into one of the largest recent displays of dissent.
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Three people were killed, eight wounded and six still missing after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa on Saturday, authorities said. Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported that the Odesa region was attacked by eight drones, of which seven were shot down by air defenses.
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Russia’s state news agency says a drone crashed into an apartment building in St Petersburg. The Associated Press cited a report by RIA Novosti, which said six people received medical help after an explosion on Saturday morning, citing the press service of the city’s health care committee.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said a child was injured in the reported strike on the Odesa apartments. Posting on X, the Ukraine president made a further plea for military support to “effectively protect our people from Russian terror”. He said the search and rescue operation in the area continues.
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More than 20 settlements in the eastern Ukrainian province of Kharkiv have reportedly sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks. Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov is reported to have said this morning that the eastern Ukrainian province had sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks, while high-rise buildings in the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, were damaged by a drone attack.
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The German defence ministry is checking whether a confidential videoconference on the Ukraine war had been wiretapped after a recording was posted on Russian social media, in a potentially huge embarrassment for Berlin. The head of Russia’s state-backed RT channel, Margarita Simonyan, on Friday posted a 38-minute audio recording of what she claimed were German army officers discussing striking Crimea….