AVDIIVKA, Ukraine – Russian-backed separatists kept up a rocket and artillery attack on this frigid city Wednesday, in a surge in violence that could pose an early, difficult foreign policy challenge to the new Trump administration.
A planned evacuation of Avdiivka, organized by the Ukrainian government, found few takers Wednesday. Only 145 residents chose to board buses that would take them away from the fighting; 88 of them were children.
Sporadic shelling of Avdiivka, on the front line between separatists and regular Ukrainian forces, had intensified this week, shortly after President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had their first phone conversation. The sudden eruption in the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine threatens to put Trump, who has said he wants better relations with Moscow, on the spot.
Analysts say that both Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appear to be trying to exploit the intensification of the fighting as a means of influencing the new U.S. administration: Putin could be daring Washington to do something about it; Poroshenko can play up Ukraine’s image as the aggrieved nation.
Small-arms fire and heavier detonations were audible Wednesday throughout the city center. At the evacuation point, Ania Bohatysh, a 69-year-old pensioner, waved goodbye to her daughter and 17-month-old grandson. “It’s much stronger shelling than it was before, so that’s why I wanted them to leave,” she said. “And now we don’t even have water or heat.”
Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Sunday, and 48 were wounded, while separatists suffered heavy losses. The number of civilian casualties is not clear.
The 20,000 people who remain here, out of a prewar population of 35,000, are without heat and water after heavy shelling took out electricity lines and wreaked havoc on the city’s Soviet-era coke plant. It is the Milanobet largest coke producer in Europe and critical to Ukraine’s steel industry.
The plant is working at 20 percent capacity now, according to plant director Musa Magomedov, who said that the town is on the precipice of a humanitarian disaster if the fighting continues.
For the first time since last summer, videos on social media purported to show protracted use of MLRS Grad rockets. The Grad, an imprecise and indiscriminate weapon, was banned under the Minsk peace agreement, signed nearly two years ago. That agreement also prohibits the use of tanks and heavy artillery. However, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, all the weapons were back in action over the past few days.
Alex Kokcharov, an analyst at IHS Jane’s, said he believes that the escalation could be a show of force by Russia.
“This is likely to be part of the wider Russian strategy of foreign and military assertiveness,” he said.
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