Remembering the high cost Russia paid to capture Avdiivka

In February 2024, Russian forces captured the key critical fortress city of Avdiivka after months of fighting. While the victory was one of the biggest that Moscow had achieved since launching its invasion of Ukraine, it was also one of the costliest in troops and equipment according to one report.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu may have told Vladimir Putin that capturing the city of Avdviika in February 2024 was accomplished with minimal losses but reporting by The Insider revealed the cost in casualties was high.  

Documented visual evidence suggested that capturing Avdiivka cost the Kremlin several thousand lives and hundreds of its military vehicles according to the investigative media outlet. These losses were the result of two factors. 

The Insider pointed to the “low skill of the Russian military commanders” fighting to take Avdiivka and “the effectiveness of modern technologies employed by Ukraine's Armed Forces” as the reasons for Moscow’s staggering losses. 

Ukrainian estimates of casualties from Dmytro Lykhoviy—a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Operational-Strategic Group of Troops—put the Kremlin’s losses at 47,000 troops. This included 17,000 soldiers killed in action in the fighting. 

Ukraine's assessment of Moscow’s losses matched up well with those from pro-Russian blogger and soldier Andrei “Murz” Morozov, who reported that 16,000 soldiers were lost just days before he was found dead by his own hand. 

Business Insider tried to put the estimated losses to take Avdiivka into perspective and it reported that only 25,000 Soviet soldiers died during the entire Soviet-Afghan war, a conflict that lasted roughly a decade from 1979 to 1989. 

An assessment from the BBC’s Russian Service assessed those killed in action during the battle for Avdiivka and the neighboring areas from October 2023 to February 2024 to be 6,614 soldiers, which is less than half of other estimates. 

“The available assessments of Russian losses at Avdiivka differ significantly, and establishing an accurate tally may take several more months, if not years,” wrote The Insider before adding that the losses were substantial. 

“However, it is evident that the number of fatalities is at least in the thousands, rendering Defense Minister Shoigu’s claim that the city was captured with ‘minimal losses’ difficult to accept,” The Insider added. 

Morozov claimed that roughly 300 armored vehicles had been lost during the fight for Avdiivka, which matched up well with a declassified U.S. intelligence report released in December 2023 that estimated 220 vehicles had been lost in Avdiivka up to the period the report examined. 

Politico covered the U.S. intelligence report’s release and noted that at that time, the report estimated that at least 13,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the fighting to capture Avdiivka, lending credence to the numbers from Ukraine. 

The Insider noted that the open-source intelligence group Frontelligence Insight thought Russian equipment losses during the battle for Avdiivka were higher than 300 units while one analyst known as Naalsio suggested they could be as high as 690 vehicles. 

Naalsio estimates put total destroyed losses at 465 vehicles while 197 were abandoned and 28 were damaged. The Insider wrote that understanding vehicle losses is important because it can also help establish troop losses.

“The 132 destroyed tanks correspond to 13 tank companies (pre-war strength of 33 personnel each), while the 263 destroyed AFVs equate to 26 motorized rifle companies (pre-war strength of 76 personnel each), " the news outlet wrote. 

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“This implies that the number of dead crew members from armored vehicles barely exceeds 2,400 personnel," The Insider continued, adding that the bulk of killed soldiers killed must have been “leg infantry” that advanced without vehicle support. 

The battle of Avdiivka lasted from the 10th of October, 2023, to the 17th of February 2024, and officially resulted in 47,000 Russian casualties, 17,000 soldiers were killed in action, 30,000 were injured, and 95 were taken prisoner according to data published by Wikipedia based on information from Ukrainian sources and the Institute for the Study of War.

Russia also lost 364 tanks in the Battle of Avdiivka as well as 248 artillery systems, 748 armored fighting vehicles, and 5 aircraft. The capture of the city has allowed Moscow to make significant progress to both the north and west of Avidiivka since it fell to Russia.