Ukraine military denies Russian forces have captured Soledar

Ukraine’s military has denied that Russian forces have encircled and captured Soledar, after claims by the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that the eastern town had fallen.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, the spokesperson for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said: “Russians say that it is under their control, it is not true.”

Russia’s capture of Soledar and its huge saltmines would have symbolic, military and commercial value for Russia. But the situation in and around Soledar appeared fluid and neither claim could be independently verified.

Prigozhin had released a photograph showing himself with a group of his fighters and a tank that he said was taken in one of the tunnels of a saltmine in the south-west of the town.

He also said only units of his paramilitary company – many of them convicts who had been offered a pardon if they fought for him – had been involved in fighting for the town.

Footage posted from Soledar by a Ukrainian soldier from a drone unit – identified by the call sign Maygar at 10am on Wednesday – suggested heavy clashes were continuing but Ukrainian forces were still holding positions in the town.

“This is the sound of Soledar,” he said to the background noise of constant artillery strikes. “Local fights are happening from time to time and artillery is working on both sides,” he added.

Accounts from Ukrainian soldiers fighting on that sector of the front suggested that Russia had moved Wagner fighters from Bakhmut to focus solely on the fight for Soledar.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, claimed that “hard battles are going on to keep Soledar”.

“The enemy does not pay attention to the large losses of its personnel and continues to actively storm. The approaches to our positions are simply littered with the bodies of dead enemy fighters.”

However, the Ukrainian military’s morning summary made only one mention of Soledar, listing it as one of several areas being shelled in the Donetsk region.

A Ukrainian soldier who has been posting video updates from the Bakhmut area, described the fighting in Soledar as fierce with contested buildings changing hands multiple times inside the town, and soldiers suffering frostbite in the freezing conditions.

Russian forces have recently focused their efforts on the capture of Soledar as part of their ambitions to take the nearby strategic city of Bakhmut and Ukraine’s larger eastern Donbas region, with fierce battles in sub-zero temperatures over the past five days.

Prigozhin had claimed late on Tuesday to have taken the entire town, encircling Ukrainian forces in a “cauldron” in the centre.

“Wagner units took control of the entire territory of Soledar. A cauldron has been formed in the centre in which urban fighting is going on. The number of prisoners will be announced tomorrow,” he added, giving no further details.

While western military analysts have geolocated Wagner units in the centre, where heavy fighting has been ongoing for the main administrative building, Russian claims to have taken the south-west of the area, where Ukraine had recently been mounting a defence close to the saltmines, appeared more questionable.

The British Ministry of Defence said earlier Russian troops and Wagner fighters had probably taken control of most of Soledar after four days of advances.

But Prigozhin’s comment that fighting continued in Soledar’s centre suggested Russian control was incomplete, despite his statement that all of the town was in Wagner’s grasp.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the military command did not mention control of Soledar on Tuesday evening. He repeated his call for more western weapons, saying Russia was gathering its forces to intensify its campaign, but did not provide details.

Ukraine’s defence ministry tweeted late on Tuesday: “Even after suffering colossal losses, Russia is still maniacally trying to seize Soledar – home to the largest saltmine in Europe.”

Ukraine said earlier its forces were still holding on to positions in Soledar, withstanding assaults by wave after wave of Russian forces seeking their first battlefield victory for months.

Some prominent Russian military bloggers have urged caution about the situation in Soledar and said that intense combat in the centre and its outskirts continued during the night.

The Institute for the Study of War was also cautious over the Russian claims, suggesting previous announcements that the town had been captured, and noting that its fall might prove of limited value in the fight for Bakhmut.

“Even taking the most generous Russian claims at face value,” the thinktank said in an update on Tuesday evening, “the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut. Control of Soledar will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut.”

Seizing Soledar would, however, be Russia’s most substantial gain since August, after a series of humiliating retreats throughout much of the second half of 2022. Russian forces have been fighting for months to capture Bakhmut.

But any victory would come at a massive cost, with troops from both sides having taken heavy losses in some of the most intense combat since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.

The Kyiv government has released pictures in recent days showing what it says are scores of dead Russian soldiers in muddy fields.

Reuters contributed to this report