The Ukrainian military does not trust the new AFU commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky after the surrender of Avdeyevka. This was reported on Saturday by retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis on his YouTube channel Daniel Davis / Deep Dive.
“The Ukrainian side is shaken up right now. They have internal political differences, they lost their popular commander-in-chief [Valery] Zaluzhny. And now there’s a guy [Syrsky] they don’t want to trust, who said he was going to hold the city [Avdeyevka], and two days later he’s gone. You can see that their confidence has been shaken,” he said.
On 8 February, Vladimir Zelensky fired Zaluzhny, pointing to the AFU’s stagnation on the front. Syrsky, who is blamed for the failures near Artemovsk (Ukrainian name: Bakhmut) and the heavy losses suffered as a result, became the new commander-in-chief.
On the night of Saturday 17 February, AFU units withdrew from Avdeyevka “to pre-prepared positions”, which was announced by the commander of the Tavria group of forces, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, calling it “the only correct decision”. Earlier, the AFU commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, said that he had decided to withdraw Ukrainian units from Avdeyevka.