Russia on Friday said that its forces had wrested control of the war-scarred town of Soledar in east Ukraine, its first claim of victory in months of battlefield setbacks, but Ukraine said fierce fighting was still under way.
Both sides have reported heavy losses in the battle for the salt mining outpost, with Ukraine determined to hold — and win back — ground.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had “completed the liberation” of Soledar late the previous day and that the victory would pave the way for more “successful offensive operations” in the Donetsk region.
Photo: EPA-EFE / RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE
Kyiv dismissed Russia’s announcement and said “severe fighting” was ongoing in Soledar, an industrial town with a pre-war population of about 10,000 now reduced to rubble.
Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Ganna Malyar said earlier that Russia had moved most of its forces around Donetsk to capture Soledar.
“This is a difficult phase of the war,” Malyar said.
In Siversk, a town north of Soledar that could be next in line for the Russian advance, artillery echoed around battered buildings dotted with a few remaining residents and Ukrainian military personnel braving light snow and freezing wind.
Oleksandr Sirenko, who was chopping window frames and floors from destroyed apartments for firewood, said he did not want Kyiv’s troops to retreat.
“You know, I’ve been afraid of many things in my life,” Sirenko said.
“We only hope they don’t retreat. We hope, we hope. We are afraid, but where should we go?” he said.
If the Russian military controls Soledar, it could improve the position of its forces as they push toward what has been their main target since October, the nearby transport crossroads of Bakhmut.
The Russian Ministry of Defense on Friday said that Soledar’s capture “makes it possible to cut off supply routes of Ukrainian troops” there and surround them.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said that Russian information operations have “overexaggerated” the importance of Soledar.
“This small-scale victory is unlikely to presage an imminent encirclement of Bakhmut,” it said.
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