Following Russian troops’ occupation last month of an industrial town in southern Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, Chinese commentators have published a series of articles predicting the ultimate defeat of the Ukrainian army. 

They say the Russian army suffered big casualties in its attacks in Avdiivka but it has an advantage over the Ukrainian army in terms of the numbers of soldiers and quantities of ammunition available. 

They say if Ukrainian troops retreat from Avdiivka, Russia can occupy the entire Donetsk region and, when it negotiates with the Ukrainian government, have the benefit of more bargaining chips.

Media reports said the ongoing fight in Avdiivka is more intense than the one in Bakhmut earlier this year but casualty figures are not yet available. After the Ukrainian army retreated from Bakhmut in May this year, it fought the Russians in Zaporozhye.

“After winning two battles in Bukhmut and Zaporozhye, the Russian army can hopefully achieve the third victory in Avdiivka,” Chen Feng, a columnist at Guancha.cn, writes in an article published on Tuesday. “Will these become the three biggest battles of the Ukraine war?”  

“If the Ukrainian troops had retreated from Bakhmut a few months earlier, they could have launched an attack in Zaporozhye at full strength and with high morale,” he says. “At that time, the Russian troops had low morale.”

“It is said that senior Ukrainian military officials and NATO think tanks had long advised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to abandon Bakhmut, but he rejected the idea,” Chen says. “After Bakhmut fell, he still ordered the fight to continue as it did not look good politically to give up Bakhmut.”

He says Zelenskyy repeated the mistakes of Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler, who forbade retreat and was finally defeated by the Soviet Union in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-1943.

He says the Ukrainian army has been gathering in Zaporozhye since the beginning of the war, planning to charge into the coastal area of Azov Sea from Melitopol to Berdyansk, cut off the land corridor between Russia and Crimea and target Mariupol. He says if this plan had succeeded, Zelenskyy would be able to retrieve all of Ukraine within the borders defined in 1991. 

Citing Western estimates and others from Ukraine and the Wagner Group, Chen says more than 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in Bakhmut while the Russian Army lost 21,000-22,000 soldiers and had 40,000 wounded.

“If the data are credible, Russia faced higher casualties than Ukraine,” he says. “But Russia has more human resources while Ukraine cannot afford the losses.”

He says Kyiv has a shortage of soldiers, fundings and weapons and should begin peace talks with Russia as soon as possible.

Russia’s attacks

While the world’s attention shifted to the Israel-Hamas fight over the past two months, the Ukrainian-Russian war intensified. In October, Russia increased its attacks in Avdiivka and Kupiansk, a town north of Avdiivka.

In late November, Russians reportedly occupied an industrial town in southern Avdiivka with a “huge-crowd strategy,” opening a “steel door” that had blocked them from entering Avdiivka.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that freezing temperatures in winter made fighting far more difficult and the defense of critical energy infrastructure far more of a priority.

“On the front line and in the cities,” Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said in a post on X on Monday, “we are already moving to a different tactic of warfare – effective defense in certain areas, continuation of offensive operations in other areas, special strategic operations on the Crimean peninsula and in the Black Sea waters and significantly reformatted missile defense of critical infrastructure.”

“Avdiivka has become a fortress since the last Ukrainian-Russian conflicts in 2014. It is a symbol of Ukrainians’ resistance to the Russian troops,” a Shanxi-based commentator says in an article published on December 1. “No one could predict that Russian soldiers launched hundreds of attacks against the Ukrainian troops this time, without caring about their own lives.”

The writer says Ukraine’s 53rd Mechanized Brigade made a fatal mistake as it decided to retreat from the industrial town in Avdiivka and not wait for the 110th Mechanized Brigade, which then had to leave.

He says that, after losing the industrial town, the Ukrainian army will have to fight against the Wagner Group in urban warfare, a kind of battlewith which it is not familiar. He says that now the Russian troops can replenish their food and weapons more easily in Avdiivka while it seems that western support to Kyiv is shrinking.

A Jiangxi-based writer says the Russian troops still need to boost their military resources in Avdiivka as they can be attacked easily when passing through a several-kilometers-long open field there. He says they need to increase their counter-artillery combat capabilities and deploy more powerful electronic jammers and drones. 

Another writer says the Avdiivka battle will not only determine the result of the Ukrainian-Russian war, but also affect the safety and stability in the entire Europe. 

Read: Xi and Biden at summit speak of conflict avoidance

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3