Russia said on February 17 that its forces had inflicted a series of defeats on Ukrainian forces along the 1,000-km (620-mile) front line just as Ukrainian troops withdrew from the devastated eastern town of Avdiivka.The Ukrainian withdrawal from Avdiivka paves the way for Russia’s biggest victory since the May 2023 capture of Bakhmut after a deadly battle that left thousands dead in a devastated city with barely a building intact.After the failure of Ukraine to pierce Russian lines last year, Moscow has been trying to grind down Ukrainian forces just as Kyiv ponders a major new mobilization and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appoints a new commander to run the war.Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of around 32,000 and is called Avdeyevka by Russians, was briefly taken in 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists who seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine but was recaptured by Ukrainian troops who built extensive fortifications.Avdiivka sits in the industrial Donbas region, 15 km (9 miles) north of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Before the war, its Soviet-era coke plant was one of Europe’s biggest. It is the key to Russia’s aim of securing full control of the two eastern “Donbas” provinces – Donetsk and Luhansk. These are among the four Ukrainian regions Russia says it has annexed but does not fully control.