Winter is coming in Ukraine, and as it approaches, just as last year, Russia has gone on the offensive in the east.<\/p>\n
Starting on Oct. 9, dozens of Russian armored vehicles backed by thousands of infantry personnel, artillery, and air power, were launched at the flanks of the city of Avdiivka<\/a>, a Ukrainian stronghold city still standing since 2014 just outside occupied Donetsk.<\/p>\n Two weeks in, the offensive has been an undisputed failure so far. Russian gains have amounted to little more than a handful of treelines on the flanks.<\/p>\n Instead of the rapid advances Moscow was hoping for, the Russian attacking force achieved fame as the main characters in a seemingly endless stream of Ukrainian drone footage of destroyed Russian armor in the fields around the city.<\/p>\n The scenes captured from the air are dramatic, showing tens of millions of dollars worth Russian equipment falling victim to Ukrainian artillery, anti-tank fire, and FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones<\/a>. Videos filmed by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers on the ground show dozens of dead bodies scattered among the destroyed vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pure chaos, the amount of troops they were sending into the assault was pretty ridiculous,\u201d said Ryan O\u2019Leary, the American commander of Chosen Company, an assault unit of foreign volunteer fighters in the 59th Mechanized Brigade, to the Kyiv Independent.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn’t seem like the Russians even knew what they were doing, it doesn’t seem like it was planned out very well, at least the ground troops didn’t have a clue.\u201d<\/p>\n On Oct. 19, after a brief lull in the fighting, Russia sent fresh waves of armored vehicles at Avdiivka, with the same result: heavy losses in heavy battles with very little gains to speak of.<\/p>\n The scale of the carnage that day was revealed in the daily report on Russian losses the next morning.<\/p>\n