The head of a Russian mercenary group fighting in Ukraine said on Tuesday that its members had captured the town of Soledar, which has recently been the site of brutal fighting. If true, it would be the first significant Russian victory after months of setbacks.
In a statement on the Telegram app, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin said troops from his Wagner group controlled the entire city, characterizing the remaining fighting as a mop-up operation. The claim that could not be verified immediately and has not been confirmed by Ukraine.
“The city center is a hotbed of urban battles,” Prigozhin said.
On Tuesday, the British MoD reported in its daily intelligence update that Russian forces were likely in control of most of Soledar after four days of particularly intense fighting and heavy losses in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
In a bloody back-and-forth across a small strip of territory, Soledar had become the focus of a month-long Russian campaign to capture the city of Bakhmut several kilometers to the southwest.
The Kremlin, in turn, made Bakhmut the centerpiece of its campaign to occupy the entire eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass, allocating resources and pouring blood there disproportionately to the size of the city.
What is Moscow looking for?
The battle underscores the return of warfare to attrition over the past two months, following a period of rapid offensives over large swathes of terrain. The fighting in Soledar has also drawn national and international attention to a small town once best known for its salt mine.
“Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said in his video address on Monday evening. And he raised the same question of many analysts and experts: “What did Russia want to achieve there?”
One answer may lie in the agenda of the Wagner Group and what it hopes to achieve in terms of reputation if it can take over Soledar and even Bajmut. It would at least allow the Russians – and Wagner – to make a claim a small triumph in their beleaguered war effort.
In and around Bakhmut, the Wagner group, which recruited prisoners to join its ranks, became the main force driving the Russian offensive, and the fighting was brutal.
Ukrainian and US officials say the Russians, especially Wagner, treat their fighters like cannon fodder, regardless of the high number of casualties. In recent days, journalists from The New York Times accompanying a team of Ukrainian drones saw corpses of Russian fighters scattered across the open field around Bakhmut.
“All the land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers,” Zelenski said. “That’s what madness is like,” he added.
Stiff Ukrainian resistance in the area bought time to transport reinforcements and new equipment to the front, he added.
The seizure of Soledar would provide Moscow’s forces with new emplacements to set up artillery and pressure Ukrainian supply lines to both Bakhmut and the northern Ukrainian-controlled city of Siversk.
strategic city
the town of Bakhmut has remained virtually depopulated after months of devastating bombing.
Its strategic value, according to military analysts, lies in the fact that some highways in the region intersect. Capturing it would put Russian forces in a better position to advance on major Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donbass, the industrial centers of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the northwest.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Army Group Eastern, Serhiy Cherevatyi, told national television on Tuesday that Russian artillery fire hit Soledar 86 times in the past day. He stressed that the situation was “very difficult”.
The fighting is a stark reminder of how the pace of warfare has changed since the autumn, when Ukraine quickly retook hundreds of square kilometers of territory in the north and south. Now, with winter preventing such major offensives, the fiercest fighting is taking place in places like Soledar and Bakhmut, with bloody street-to-street battles where progress is measured in metres.
But more mobile operations are expected to return in the coming months, and intense pressure from Ukraine for its allies to supply armored vehicles appears to be paying off.
western tanks
The British government confirmed on Tuesday that it is considering sending some of its Challenger II tanks to Ukraine – they would be the first Western main battle tanks to be supplied to Kiev’s forces – as Ukraine continues to press Germany for Leopard tanks. .
Last week, France, Germany and the United States agreed to send armored fighting vehicles, which are less heavily armed and armored than tanks, to Ukraine for the first time.
Russia has repeatedly warned the United States and its allies not to send weapons more sophisticated attacks against Ukraine, qualifying the act as a provocation or an escalation. Western officials have been reluctant to get more deeply involved in the conflict, determined not to engage in a direct confrontation with Russia, and continue to refuse to send fighter jets and long-range missiles requested by Ukraine.
But the taboos fell one after another. After months of debate, the Biden administration has agreed to send a battery of the most advanced US air defense system, the Patriot missile, and Germany has said it will supply another.
U.S. officials said Tuesday that Ukrainian troops will travel to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to receive training in the use of the Patriot, a complex system that can take up to 100 people to operate. During the war, one of the challenges was teaching the Ukrainians to use unfamiliar weapon systems, and most of the training took place in Germany.
The arrival of more tanks for the Ukrainian forces would be just in time. After nearly a year of intense fighting, much of Kiev’s armored fleet has been depleted and is in desperate need of repair and replacement. Some Ukrainian units have suffered so much vehicle losses that captured Russian tanks make up a large part of their inventory.
Despite the intensity of the last few days, the battle for Soledar, like that for Bakhmut, has not been stopped since the summer, meaning that Ukrainian forces have had plenty of time to build trenches outside the city in case before it falls, halting a possible Russian advance.
Military analysts question Russia’s readiness to take heavy losses in the Bakhmut area, which they say is of little importance. Analysts say Russian forces are exhausted after nearly a year of heavy fighting and should focus on stabilizing a front line that stretches more than 900 kilometers.
But Ukraine responded in kind, throwing its forces into the fray to prevent the area from falling into Russian hands.
Bearing the brunt of the pro-Russian fighting in and around Bakhmut, the Wagner Group is controlled by Prigozhin, who made his name as a restaurant owner, became a close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin, and transformed that relationship in a business empire. It is believed that Prigozhin wants a victory for Bakhmut to improve his political position in his country.
The Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War noted in an analysis on Monday that Prigozhin “continues to use reports of the Wagner Group’s success at Soledar to bolster the Wagner Group’s reputation as an effective fighting force.” .
While acknowledging the intensity of the battle in Bakhmut’s area, Ukrainian officials have also hinted as much losing the city to Russian forces wouldn’t be a major setback. Zelensky, in his late night speech, stressed the broader goal of retaking all of Russia’s occupied territory.
“The result of this difficult and long battle will be the liberation of all of our Donbass,” he said.
Font: The New York Times
Translation: Elisa Carnelli
B. C
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.