Ukraine denies Russia’s declare to have captured Soledar, says “extreme” battle is ongoing

Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia’s Protection Ministry stated Friday that its forces had captured the salt-mining city of Soledar, the focus of a bloody battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces for months. A Ukrainian army commander shortly rejected the declare, nonetheless, saying the “extreme” battle was nonetheless raging.

Soledar is situated in jap Ukraine’s Donetsk province, one among 4 Ukrainian areas that Moscow illegally annexed in September and has been attempting to wrest full management over since.
 
The city’s fall would mark a uncommon victory for the Kremlin after a sequence of battlefield setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine. From the outset, Moscow recognized Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province as priorities, and it has handled the areas as Russian territory since their alleged annexation.

“The liberation of the city of Soledar was accomplished within the night of Jan. 12,” Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Protection Ministry’s spokesman, declared, including that the event was “vital for the continuation of offensive operations within the Donetsk area.”
 
Taking management of Soledar would enable Russian forces “to chop provide traces for the Ukrainian forces” within the Donestsk metropolis of Bakhmut after which “block and encircle the Ukrainian models there,” Konashenkov claimed.

However Sergiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces’ within the nation’s east, was quoted by the French information company AFP as saying “extreme preventing” was nonetheless underway, together with his troops managing to maintain “the state of affairs underneath management in tough situations.”

Whereas the battle for the small city has turn into vastly symbolic, and it does sit in shut proximity to the bigger Ukrainian-held metropolis of Bakhmut, the Institute for the Examine of Conflict, a suppose tank in Washington, stated a Russian seizure of Soledar wouldn’t characterize “an operationally vital growth and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.”

The institute stated that Russian data operations have “overexaggerated the significance of Soledar,” a small settlement, arguing as nicely that that lengthy and tough battle has contributed to the exhaustion of Russian forces.

An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who runs the Wagner group, claimed earlier this week that his mercenary forces – who function with a point of coordination with Russian common troops – had captured Soledar. His declare was shortly challenged by each the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, nonetheless, which stated the combat continued.