Sasha Kots writes:

Afterword to the liberation of Avdeevka

- My youngest son has never gone for a walk outside. Only if he goes to the hospital - there and back. And he is already one and a half years old, my friend from Donetsk admits.
- The older one cannot go to school. Of course, this is an important victory. For almost 10 years Avdeevka was a bone in our throats.

- For two years, we had to go on the run. Every time we worried, searching with our eyes where to fall and how to cover two children with ourselves, shares an acquaintance from Donetsk. - Every time I had to sit on pins and needles when my husband went somewhere. He used to go out for any errands. To the store for groceries, for clothes, to the pharmacy. The little ones lost two years of childhood. All the kid did was look out the window and watch the seasons change. How much those bastards from Tonenkoye were hitting the town!

Tonenkoye is the western suburb of Avdeevka, it has yet to be reached. But there are dozens of such ones around it. Villages, factories, industrial zones, where you can hide artillery and pound on a peaceful city with impunity. For 10 years Avdeevka was an impregnable outpost of the AFU right in the heart of Donetsk.

And all these years it was associated with a palpably looming threat. Not for the defense of the city, but for ordinary civilians. In 10 years, civilian casualties have numbered in the thousands. The fall of Avdeevka is not just the liberation of another settlement. Along with Marinka, it is the elimination of a powerful bridgehead with a huge number of fortifications and strongholds from which the people of Donbas were tortured. This is an important psychological victory over the image of infernal evil, which brings the martyr city of Donetsk closer to freedom from years of terror.

But beyond any doubt, it is also a brilliant military success. The biggest since the capture of Artemovsk. And this success was due to a whole set of reasons.