Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 01DEC23 13:30 PST - Marinka Falls

After 645 days of relentless attacks, Marinka, a pile of rubble that used to be home to 12,000 people, was captured by Russian forces.

While the battles for Kyiv, Chernihiv, Izyum, Kharkiv, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and Bakhmut captured the attention of the world and the headlines in the news, Marinka is a silent symbol of the tenacity and faith of the Ukrainian people and the brutality of their Russian enemies.

One of the first settlements to be attacked as part of Russia's multiprong offensive on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian defenders stopped Russian troops in the eastern outskirts and held them there for months. During the spring of 2022, Russian commanders were focused on trying to preserve infrastructure on the western edges of the Donetsk Oblast, with fighting contained. They had deluded themselves that they would be welcomed as liberators with little resistance and wanted the economic engines intact.

In late July 2022, after the fall of Lysychansk, that approach changed. Russia launched a brutal offensive on the settlement, forcing the handful of civilians that remained in the western edges to flee. On August 21, 2022, the city was carpeted in thermite, and Russian forces briefly crossed Druzhby Avenue. Russian troops would remain blocked there until the spring of 2023.

Over the last 645 days, the Russian Ministry of Defense and illegitimate leaders of the Donetsk People's Republic repeatedly declared that Marinka would be captured tomorrow and, on at least three occasions, claimed the settlement had been captured. Somehow, tomorrow never came.

By day 400, Russian artillery and aircraft had destroyed every building, every road, and every tree in Marinka. The once beautiful central park with a church at the center was only rubble and tree stumps. Marinka gave us the line, "We must leave at maximum speed," when Russian drone operators and propagandists gave away their position.  

Russian forces pushed across Druzhby Avenue in June 2023 when the 154th Brigade of Chechen Akhmat took over. In true Chechen fashion, they lost ground and were rotated out to Bakhmut less than two months later. After bold predictions by Colonel General Ramzan Kadyrov of a quick victory, he complained about the difficulty of fighting and a tunnel war under the ruins.

As the Ukrainian summer offensive came to an end in October 2023, Russian troops quietly pushed forward block by block. Two weeks ago, Ukrainian troops were clinging to a two to three-block strip of ruins on the western and northwestern edge of the city. Ammunition is running low, and Russian troops are throwing almost all available resources at Avdiivka. For over 250 days, Ukrainian troops have been defending dust. We assessed that the fall of Marinka had become a certainty.

For the last two days, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine didn't mention Marinka in their morning reports, which we believed was an indicator that Ukrainian forces had been pushed out. Oddly, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported there was a Ukrainian offensive yesterday, as did WarGonzo. 

And after repeated claims of, "We will capture Marinka tomorrow," the leadership of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic had been silent. But why? Because, like Soledar and Bakhmut and dozens of other villages in Donetsk, Russia now sits atop a throne of rubble, ashes, unexploded bombs, and bones.

The war goes on.