KIEV, UKRAINE (AP) Jan,11– War put the fate of a run-down salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine at stake on Wednesday.
According to military analysts, Ukrainian and Russian forces fought street by street to keep or capture Soledar. The city’s fall is unlikely to mark a turning point in the war, but it will come at a price for the Kremlin, which has been hungry for good news from the battlefield over the past few months.
It would also provide a strategic starting point for Russian forces seeking to capture other areas of Donetsk Oblast, which are still under Ukrainian control. Luhansk province had been the main target of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the fighting largely stalled. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Group, said Wednesday that Russia’s claims about Soledar’s capture were “not true,” Ukrainian news agency Suspilne reported.
Cherevaty did not provide further details, only saying that the Ukrainian military chief of staff would provide more information later.
In an update Wednesday morning, the Chief of Staff named Soleder only among the cities that continue to be bombarded by Russian forces.
Late Tuesday, Evgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, claimed his soldiers took control of Soledar in an audio report posted on his Russian social media platform. but said the fighting would continue for some time. “Ogama” in the center of the city.
The Associated Press was unable to confirm this claim. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russian forces were “going forward with positive movements” in Soledar, but explained its capture when asked about claims that it was under Russian control.
“Don’t rush, let’s wait for an official statement,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that “everything was completely destroyed” in the region after persistent shelling and weeks of house-to-house hand-to-hand fighting.
“All the land near Soledar is covered with corpses of occupying forces,
Solder is known for mining and processing salt, but it has little intrinsic value. But it is at a strategic point 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the town of Bakhmut, where Russian forces are about to besiege. The capture of Bakhmut would cut Ukrainian supply lines and pave the way for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces to advance towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the main Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.
Michael Coffman, Director of Russian Studies at CAN, a nonprofit research organization in Arlington, Virginia, said Soleder’s downfall “will make Bakhmut’s holdings more precarious for Ukraine.”
But a costly battle of attrition with the expected heavy casualties could make a Russian victory as costly as a defeat.
Now Wagner’s group, which reportedly includes a large number of prisoners recruited from Russian prisons, is leading an attack on Soledar and Bakhmut.
Western intelligence agencies estimate that the Wagner Group accounted for up to a quarter of all Russian fighters in Ukraine. Successes at Soledar and Bakhmut will help Prigozhin, who has been an outspoken critic of Russia’s military leaders, increase his influence in the Kremlin.
Russia illegally annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, and two other her Ukrainian provinces in his September, but Russian forces are struggling to move forward. Fighting over Bakhmut intensified after Ukrainian forces recaptured the city south of Kherson in his November.
