Moscow announced on Friday the complete capture of the city of Soledar, in eastern Ukraine. Information immediately denied by kyiv. Statements to the contrary have followed one another for a week about this locality, the scene of intense fighting between the Ukrainian army which defends the city center and the paramilitary Wagner militia which occupies the suburbs and hopes to conquer the whole town. Le Parisien looks back on the various advances and declarations of recent days.
January 7: First mentions of Soledar
While the fighting in Bakhmout, a town on the Donbass front in the east of the country, has been attracting media attention for several months, the name of Soledar, located 15 km further north, has appeared on social networks.
The military historian Cédric Mas mentions the city for the first time in his “daily update”. According to him, Wagner’s men succeeded in advancing on the northern flank of Bakhmout, forcing the Ukrainians to fall back into Soledar. The city is then already completely devastated by the bombardments of the battle of Bakhmout which lasts for several months.
January 8: the salt mines
The objective of Evgueni Prigojine, the commander of the Wagner group engaged in Soledar, becomes clearer: the salt mines located in the city and their 200 km of underground galleries which could, according to him, allow his forces to pass behind the lines Ukrainians.
Underground can “hold a large group of people” and “infantry fighting vehicles”, says Putin’s éminence grise.
January 9: the Russians attempt an assault
“The enemy again tried desperately to storm Soledar from different directions. He launched the most professional units of the Wagner group into battle,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement. At that time, the situation was complicated but not yet critical for the kyiv forces, which repelled the assault. The Ukrainians nevertheless send reinforcements to the area and the commander of the Ukrainian army, Olexandr Syrsky, goes to the city. In his daily address to the nation, Volodymyr Zelensky pays tribute to the fighters of Bakhmout and Soledar who shine in “one of the bloodiest places on the front”.
January 10: “very hard and bloody fighting”
“Very hard and bloody” fighting continued on the outskirts of the city, according to militia leader Wagner, who praised the bravery of the defenders. “Ukrainian Armed Forces honorably defend the territory,” he wrote on Telegram. According to kyiv, the Russians massively bombarded the locality before engaging in assaults that were very costly in human lives, that is “a tactic of the First World War”.
Satellite photographs taken before and after the start of the fighting show the extent of the damage.
January 11: Rumors of encirclement of defenders
Yevgeny Prigogine claims that his forces control “the entire territory of Soledar” and that they surround the Ukrainian 46th Airmobile Brigade in the city center. A photo of him, surrounded by his men in what looks like a gallery of the salt mine, circulates on social networks, suggesting that Wagner now controls part of the underground.
The Ukrainian army immediately denies any capture of the city by the Russians, assuring that Soledar “was, is and will always be Ukrainian”. Even the Kremlin tempers, inviting not to declare victory too soon. In his daily address to the nation, however, Volodymyr Zelensky recognizes for the first time “a difficult situation”. The battle of Soledar is already considered by the Ukrainians as “the bloodiest” since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
January 12: heavy losses
No major attack to report. “Despite a difficult situation, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting tirelessly,” said Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar. According to her, the mercenaries of the paramilitary group Wagner, “suffer heavy losses” and “the outskirts of the city are strewn with bodies”. The Kremlin salutes “the gigantic work” and “the heroic actions” of these mercenaries on the front line. Zelensky promises for his part to provide “everything necessary” to his men deployed on the spot.
January 13: The Russians again claim to have taken the city
“The liberation of the city of Soledar was completed on January 12 in the evening,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Friday. “Heavy fighting is still taking place in Soledar,” immediately replied the spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Ukrainian army, Serguiï Tcherevaty. He accused Moscow of “spreading a informational noise false around the conquest of this city in order to “sow distrust among the Ukrainians”.
Despite deadly fighting, the strategic importance of Soledar and its salt mines should be put into perspective according to experts. The capture of this city, populated by 10,000 inhabitants before the war, “is unlikely to predict an imminent encirclement of Bakhmout”, the main target of the Russian army, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) , an organization based in the United States.
The obstinacy of the Russians in the area would simply be due to the fact that the leader of the Wagner group hopes to obtain a first victory there, after several months of setbacks, and to prove the value of his mercenaries against the regular troops of the Kremlin.