Ukraine: the army defends Soledar despite “a difficult situation”

The Russian army has been trying since the summer to conquer this area of ​​the Donetsk region, but comes up against “relentless” fighting around Soledar.

Source AFP

Soledar, a small town of about 10,000 inhabitants is now completely destroyed. (Illustrative photo).
© ARIS MESSINIS / AFP

Published on 01/12/2023 at 11:35 a.m.

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L’Ukrainian army defends Soledar despite “a difficult situation” there, Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said Thursday, as “fierce” fighting rages with Russian forces in and around this small eastern town from Ukraine. “The fiercest and most violent fighting continues today in the area of ​​Soledar”, she indicated during a press conference, specifying that “despite a difficult situation, the Ukrainian soldiers are fighting without relax”.

On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the fighting was continuing in Soledar, a small town of around 10,000 pre-war inhabitants now completely destroyed, and that the front in the region was “holding”. “Russia is sending thousands of its citizens to the slaughterhouse, but we are holding out,” Ganna Maliar hammered Thursday, hailing “the resilience and heroism” of the Ukrainian forces engaged in this violent battle which has lasted for several months.

“Heavy losses” on both sides

Russia has indeed been trying since the summer to conquer this area of ​​the Donetsk region, after several major humiliating setbacks which notably prompted Vladimir Putin to declare a partial mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists and launch a campaign of strikes on infrastructure. Ukrainian energy.READ ALSO Ukraine: Putin’s miscalculations

Without giving figures, Ganna Maliar told the press on Thursday that the Russian troops fighting at Soledar “suffered heavy losses”, “trying without success to break through our defense”. “The outskirts of the city today are strewn with the bodies of (Vladimir) Putin’s slain soldiers,” she told reporters. kyiv for its part did not quantify its men killed and wounded in the battle of Soledar and Bakhmout, the big city of the area, but Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, had deplored Wednesday “significant losses” in a interview with AFP.