Since Jan. 1, President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces have dropped around one million pounds of aerial bombs on an area encompassing just 12 square miles, according to estimates by Ukrainian officials and British intelligence.
“I have not been able to reach anyone for the past two days,” 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.
Vitalii Barabash, the head of the Avdiivka military administration, said that multistory buildings “collapse like card houses,” adding, “Very often people remain under the rubble and, unfortunately, we cannot reach them.”
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.
“It is designed,” he said, “to raise the societal costs of continued resistance and coerce the adversary and its population to give up.” Mr. Putin hailed the capture of Avdiivka as “an important victory,” the Kremlin said on Saturday.
Residents on Chernyshevskoho Street, near the entrance of the city, she said, “were bombed so badly that people just wrapped themselves in white sheets” and wandered out into the open, hoping to find a volunteer to take them out.
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