Heavy fighting erupts near Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine
The command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reports that on Sunday, January 29, at around 7:00 am, separatists, after a massive artillery barrage, attacked Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka industrial zone.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the attack on the Ukrainian positions was repelled.
“As a result of a successful defensive maneuver, the Ukrainian forces stopped the enemy attack and prevented them from taking over the Ukrainian positions. The separatist forces suffered heavy casualties,” the statement of the Command of the Ukrainian forces reads.
The spokesman of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Alexander Motuznyak, stated that “at the moment the situation at Avdiivka industrial zone remains tense; the enemy continues to shell the Ukrainian positions using all the artillery that they have. At the same time there have been no more direct attacks”.
The spokesman of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense stated that due to the aggravated situation along the contact line, all the units of the Ukrainian armed forces have been placed on a state of high readiness.
According to the information provided by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, as a result of the separatist shelling, 3 Ukrainian servicemen were killed and one serviceman was injured.
The number of the casualties on the side of the separatists remains unknown. At the same time , the former commander of the separatist Vostok battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky, wrote that the acting commander of the Vostok battalion has been killed during the attack.
“The commander of the battalion, Ivan Andreyevich, my friend and dedicated partner, was behind my back. He is one of the first people who joined the battalion and helped me to build it. This morning, he himself, lead the unit to the [Ukrainian] positions. And now he is not with us,” wrote Khodakovsky on his Facebook page.