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The fate of a ruined salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday as Ukraine said its forces held off a furious Russian offensive in what has become one of the fiercest and costliest battles of the nearly 11-month war.
Although unlikely to provide a turning point in the war, Soledar’s fall to Russian forces after months of Ukrainian defense would be a gift to the Kremlin, which has been starved of good news from the battlefield amid Ukraine’s counterattacks in recent months. It will also give Russian forces a strategic springboard for their efforts to surround the nearby city of Bakhmut.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that air units had eliminated Soledar from the north and south.
But Ukraine denies that the city, with a pre-war population of about 10,000, has fallen.
The next generation: the witness
“Heavy fighting continues in Soledar,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram. “The enemy has again changed units after sustaining losses, has increased the number of Wagner fighters and tried to burst through the defense of our troops and capture the city, but without success.”
The Kremlin also stopped short of claiming victory and admitting many casualties.
Reuters could not independently verify the situation at Soledar. But a Reuters photographer who reached the suburbs in recent days said that many residents fled the streets out of the city because of the punishing cold.
He said plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the city and incoming artillery fire was unabated. Ambulances were waiting to receive the wounded on the road from Soledar to Bakhmut, and there was chaos in the field hospital.
‘A very important small town,’ said Russian TV
Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Russian-controlled part of Donetsk province, said that the capture of Soledar would open up the prospect of capturing more important cities in the west of the region recognized by Russia as the Donetsk People’s Republic – the center of Ukrainian heavy industry and one of the four provinces. Russia claims it has been annexed.
“And this is actually a turning point. Now preparations are underway for the moment we are waiting for – the liberation of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” said Pushilin.
Soledar is a major item on Russian state television news, which rarely mentions the Russian coup. Olga Skabeyeva, a combative talk show host, called the city “a very important small town.”
Analysts were more equivocal.
Soledar’s fall would make “holding Bakhmut more precarious for Ukraine,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia Studies at the nonprofit research organization CAN in Arlington, Va., noted Wednesday.
But a costly war of attrition, with heavy casualties, could make a Russian victory as costly as a defeat.
“I don’t think the result in Bakhmut is important compared to the cost to Russia to get it,” Kofman said in a tweet.
The Institute for the Study of War said Russian forces were fighting “Ukrainian resistance” around Bakhmut.
“The reality of block-by-block control over the terrain in Soledar is obscured by the dynamic nature of urban fighting … and Russian forces have struggled to gain significant tactical advantage in the Soledar area for months,” the think-tank said. .
The collapse of Soledar “does not mean that the defense line or the Ukrainian front has collapsed and must return to a new defense line,” said Oleksandr Musiyenko, a Kyiv-based analyst.
Wagner’s group, which now reportedly includes a large contingent of convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has led attacks on Soledar and Bakhmut. Western intelligence has estimated that the Wagner Group comprises up to a quarter of all Russian fighters in Ukraine.
Late Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, claimed in an audio report posted on Russian social media platforms that his forces had taken control of Soledar, although he also said that fighting continued in the “cauldron” in the center of the city. .
Cave mines can hide troops, weapons
Russia’s state news agency RIA said Wagner had taken over the Soledar salt mine, and a photo posted on Wagner’s Telegram channel appeared to show Prigozhin and his fighters inside the mine.
The cavernous Soledar mine is owned by the state-owned company Artemsil, which dominated the Ukrainian salt market until it stopped production a few months after the Russian invasion. The mine reaches a depth of 200-300 meters and has tunnels with a combined length of 300 kilometers, according to a local tourism website.
This company was once considered one of the largest in Eastern Europe and exported salt to 20 countries. A hot air balloon was once flown into one of the mines to demonstrate its depth.
Salt mines can be a commercially profitable asset and are also used to store ammunition and weapons from some Ukrainian missiles.
US officials said last week that Prigozhin wanted to control salt and gypsum from mines near Bakhmut. Prigozhin himself had spoken of the “underground city” of Bakhmut, saying it could hold troops and tanks.
Success in Soledar and Bakhmut would help Prigozhin, who openly criticized the Russian military leadership, to increase his influence in the Kremlin.
Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other Ukrainian provinces in September, but its forces have struggled to make progress. After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November, fighting heated up around Bakhmut.
WATCH | CBC’s Chris Brown in Kyiv on the fight for Soledar:
CBC’s Chris Brown is in Ukraine and reports on the fierce battle for the eastern salt mining town of Soledar, which is now under attack by Russia.
More news from the war
- Russian forces continued to attack elsewhere, including 13 settlements in and around the Kharkiv region that were mostly returned to Ukrainian hands in September and October, the Ukrainian military said.
- Ukraine introduced an emergency power outage in its eastern and southeastern regions on Wednesday as low temperatures and harsh weather conditions crippled its energy system, officials said.
- Russia still makes a lot of money from oil sales despite the prices imposed by the Group of Seven major democracies. Researchers at Helsinki’s Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air say price caps and bans on oil shipments to Europe cost an estimated US$172 million a day. But Russia still takes about $688 million a day.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke in a recorded message at the Golden Globes ceremony Tuesday night. “There will be no third World War,” Zelenskyy said, predicting Russia’s defeat. “This is not a trilogy.”
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