Quote (Djunior @ 20 Feb 2024 10:17)
Your logic is flawed. The Russian lost a huge amount of men and material in the battle for Berlin 1945. Does that mean they lost the battle, or was the West putting it that way? Of course not. The Russians were part of the allies, that's the difference here.
The attempts to downplay the significance of Russian victories in Ukraine is pure cope. First the city is called a fortress and strategically important but when the Russians take the city it's called a bombed out shell, symbolic victory, countless Russians died therefor it's not worth it, and so on. Pure copium.
In 1945, Nazi Germany was already effectively defeated, what the battles had actually become by that point was a race to Berlin between the western Allies on one side and the Soviets on the other side. The Soviets recklessly sacrificed thousands, probably tens of thousands of their soldiers during the Battle of Berlin who didn't need to die - but taking things more slowly would have risked ending up with less influence over the occupied post-war Germany. So in this sense, taking Berlin as quickly as possible, no matter the death toll, did have a strategic reasoning behind it.
I don't care about how fortified Avdiivka was, you cannot hold such an exposed position, particularly not against a foe who has the upper hand on artillery and manpower. By the way, I never said that this was a
symbolic victory, you're making that up. What I stress is that this victory was not some huge Russian feat and that it isn't necessarily indicative of Ukraine's lines crumbling at-large.
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The stuff you quote about its strategiv value confirms what I already wrote previously: Avdiivka had strategic value as the gateway to Donetsk, had strategic value as long as Ukraine wanted to attack, wanted to put pressure on the Russians in Donbass. But since they can't spare the ammo to keep shelling Donetsk from Avdiivka anyway, and since the idea of taking back the Donbass has morphed into a pipedream, the strategic value of Avdiivka for the Ukrainians had been gone. For the Russians, it has marginal strategic value since controlling it consolidates their control over the region, even in the unlikely case that the tides of this war turn yet again and Ukraine gets on the offense again.
That coke plant is definitely destroyed, and presumably had been idling since 2014.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 20 2024 10:51am