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\u201cAvdiivka is a constant barrage of aviation bombs,\u201d Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of the 3rd Special Assault Brigade, said on Friday. \u201c<\/strong>It feels like the largest number of air bombs on such a stretch of land in the entire history of humanity. These bombs completely obliterate any positions. All buildings, structures, after just one airstrike, turn into craters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Astonishingly, more than 900 civilians had remained in the city, according to city administrators and the police \u2014 from a prewar population of 30,000 \u2014 living subterranean lives and surviving on food and supplies brought in by aid workers.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the Ukrainian withdrawal, their fate was unknown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not been able to reach anyone for the past two days,\u201d said Ihor Fir, a mechanic at the coke plant before it was destroyed, who was regularly risking his life to bring food, water and medicine to the civilians still living in Avdiivka and surrounding villages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The last messages he received were from people desperate to escape, but unable to move under the constant shelling. Any survivors in the city, he said, were likely to be stranded. \u201cThere is no way for them to get out,\u201d he said by phone on Saturday. \u201cThe road is under shelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview last week, Mr. Fir called conditions in Avdiivka \u201cjust horrible\u201d and shared videos and photos of the devastation from his last trip into the city earlier this month. \u201cThere are ruins everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a single house left untouched.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Vitalii Barabash, the head of the Avdiivka military administration, said that multistory buildings \u201ccollapse like card houses,\u201d adding, \u201cVery often people remain under the rubble and, unfortunately, we cannot reach them.\u201d <\/p>\n
He estimated earlier this month that at least 800 guided bombs, each weighing between 550 and 3,300 pounds, had been dropped this year within the city limits. His claim could not be independently confirmed, but the British intelligence agency reported that in just four weeks, Russian warplanes dropped some 600 guided bombs on Avdiivka, with as many as 50 recorded in a single day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Russian tactics in Avdiivka were \u201ca textbook punishment campaign, which they have orchestrated in Chechnya, Syria, Ukraine and even Afghanistan,\u201d said Seth. G. Jones, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is designed,\u201d he said, \u201cto raise the societal costs of continued resistance and coerce the adversary and its population to give up.\u201d Mr. Putin hailed the capture of Avdiivka as \u201can important victory,\u201d the Kremlin said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
There are no reliable statistics on the number of soldiers or civilians killed in the bombardments.<\/p>\n
Mr. Fir shared pictures of the ruins of a supermarket hit by a bomb last week as 15 people sheltered in the basement. At least 10 of them died and remained buried in the rubble, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA person goes to sleep and does not wake up,\u201d he said as he traveled to bring food and water to refugees in a village about three miles from Avdiivka. As the Russians advanced to the north and west, they flattened that village as well. At least half the homes where the refugees took shelter were bombed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Avdiivka has been on the front line of fighting for a decade, dating to Russia\u2019s first bid to cleave off a part of eastern Ukraine, in 2014. The constant skirmishes often receded into the background. Life for the 30,000 residents could be difficult, but manageable.<\/p>\n
The city was known then for the sparkling blue lakes that filled former quarries. Residents were proud and determined to stay and live an active life despite being on the front line. At the annual festival to celebrate the city\u2019s founding in 1956, the loud music would drown out distant shelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cAvd\u0456\u0456vka was a good, beautiful town,\u201d said Victoria, 52, who was one of the last civilians to escape Avdiivka earlier this month and asked that her family name not be used because she feared for her life. \u201cWe lived. We worked. Everything was good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That all ended on Feb. 24, 2022, when the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin immediately set its sights on Avdiivka, shelling from a distance and skirmishing in industrial zones, but failed time and again to break through Ukrainian fortifications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After his home was destroyed last May, Mr. Fir fled with his wife. By June, there were fewer than 2,000 civilians in Avdiivka, most of them living largely underground.<\/p>\n
The hulking industrial plant with its warren of Soviet-era nuclear fallout shelters offered refuge for people as fighting intensified. But eventually civilians were evacuated and the plant became a fortress for the Ukrainian military. Civilians who remained in Avdiivka mostly sheltered in basements.<\/p>\n
Victoria refused to evacuate. \u201cMy husband was killed by a bomb on July 15, 2022,\u201d she said. He was getting water from a well when he was blown apart, she said. When her mother also died, she had only her dog and her mother\u2019s dog to keep her company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not want to leave because the graves of my relatives remained here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Dozens of interviews over the last two years show that the reasons civilians stay behind in war zones are complicated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI just put up with it,\u201d Victoria said. \u201cI thought sooner or later, it had to end somehow. It didn\u2019t stop \u2014 it just got worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early October, Russia launched the first of a series of large-scale offensives aimed at broadly encircling Avdiivka.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in repeated waves of assaults, according to Ukrainian and Western officials. Ukraine, despite suffering its own losses, held on.<\/p>\n
The Russians devised a new plan this winter, using a two-mile-long drainage tunnel to burrow under Ukrainian fortifications, infiltrate a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the city and ambush the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As the Russians advanced, some civilians escaped on foot to the city center, where they were met by a special police unit, known as the White Helmets, to be evacuated.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian police shared a video of an evacuation last month, with civilians describing chaos and bloodshed as Russians entered their neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Russian troops entered, it wasn\u2019t just a nightmare, it was some kind of Armageddon,\u201d an old man said. \u201cBlood, deaths, looting. Thirty-four years in the mines, and everything I did for my family, it\u2019s all destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their accounts could not be independently verified.<\/p>\n
But dozens of horror stories were relayed by residents who managed to get out as Russian forces fought their way deeper into the city.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Viktor Hrydin, 87, who helped build the coke plant that has long been Avdiivka\u2019s economic engine, refused to go even as his world burned around him. A neighbor, Tetiana, 52, moved in to take care of him.<\/p>\n
On Christmas, a bomb exploded at their home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was covered in blood,\u201d Viktor said in an interview at a hospital where he was recovering. \u201cAnd her blood was flowing like a river.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tetiana\u2019s leg was ripped apart, and a bullet had torn through his arm. Still, he was able to pull her to safety. She was recovering in a room with seven other heavily injured women. They were alive, but their lives were shattered.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn old age, I was left with nothing,\u201d Viktor said.<\/p>\n
Even after two years of unfathomable violence, Victoria was not prepared for Russia\u2019s final bid to annihilate her city.<\/p>\n
Residents on Chernyshevskoho Street, near the entrance of the city, she said, \u201cwere bombed so badly that people just wrapped themselves in white sheets\u201d and wandered out into the open, hoping to find a volunteer to take them out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cPeople were dying there every day,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing you can do to escape, no basement, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized that if I didn\u2019t leave, \u201cshe said, \u201cI would just go crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was one of the last people to make it out of Avdiivka, on Feb. 2, before evacuation became impossible. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from outside Avdiivka. Nataliia Novosolova and Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n