SBF
A Texan in Donetsk: Russell Bentley Explains the Huge Relevance of the Russian Siege of Avdiivka – ‘Once It Falls the Donbas Front Will Shatter Like Glass’
When Russell ‘Texas’ Bentley talks about the war in the Donbas, and the struggle against Nazis in Ukraine, it’s not hearsay. He has been there from the start, and served in Vostok Battalion and XAH Spetsnaz Battalion in 2014, 2015 and 2017, fighting on the side of the Donetsk People’s Republic – now a region of Russia. He was also baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.
This last week Bentley shared a new update from downtown Donetsk with some really big news.
Sputnik reported:
“The biggest thing that everybody’s talking about recently is the advances of our guys in the Avdiivka front. They’ve taken the Terrikon (slag heap) which is a literally strategic position from there. They can observe for miles around.”
Not unlike Mariupol with the Azovstal industrial area, in Avdiivka the Coke plant is an area where Ukrainian soldiers have deeply fortified and are holed up.
From the conquered slag heap Russians can survey that area, as well as the whole town of Avdiivka, and even further up to the rear areas.
Bentley suggests that the pincers are closing, since the visibility allows Russian forces to ‘bring in drones, artillery, rocket fire, whatever we need in order to block off reinforcements and reprovisioning’.
We’ve seen time and again – the Russian war of attrition and its boa-constrictor ’embrace’ of cities.
[much more at link, and photo and map.]