Berlin.
The head of the Russian private army Wagner reports the capture of Soledar in Donbass. What this means for the war in Ukraine.
Fierce fighting has been going on in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass for weeks. Now the head of the Russian private army Wagner, Yevgeny Prigoshin, announces the capture of the city of Soledar. Why is the city so important?
Where is Soledar?
the Small town of Soledar had 11,000 inhabitants before the war. It is located in Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. More than 500 civilians are currently staying in Soledar, as the Ukrainian military administrator for the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, announced on Tuesday evening. “Some of them would like to leave the city immediately, which is not possible at the moment because of the intense fighting,” he said on television. “Unless there is a safe way out of the city, there is no evacuation.”
Ukraine Crisis – The most important news about the war
What happened in Soledar?
After days of heavy fighting for Soledar, members of the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner announced the conquest of the place. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Soledar was conquered. A group of Ukrainian soldiers was still surrounded in the center of the village.
This was not confirmed by the government in Kyiv. The Russian military has not yet made an official statement either. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maljar reported on violent assaults by Russian troops. The front of the Ukrainian defense lines was “littered with the bodies of the attackers”.
Indirectly, however, Kyiv confirmed that its own troops are retreating. According to the Ukrainian military, it has fended off Russian attacks at 13 different locations, but the hard-fought Soledar was not named.
“In the past 24 hours, units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have attacked the occupiers in the settlements of Khryanivka (Kharkiv region), Stelmakhivka (Luhansk region), Spirne, Rozdolivka, Vezele, Bakhmut, Klishchiivka, Majorsk, Vodyane, Nevelske, Krasnohorivka, Marjinka and Prechystivka repulsed in the Donetsk region,” said the situation report of the Ukrainian General Staff. The deliberate omission of the name of the small town indicates that the Ukrainian forces may have largely lost control of Soledar.
Why is Soledar so important?
Around ten and a half months after the Russian attack on Ukraine, the fighting in the Donetsk region is currently particularly fierce. The cities of Soledar and Bakhmut are of strategic importance: They are part of the Ukrainian defensive wall in front of the metropolitan area between Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. It is the last metropolitan area in the Donbass region that the Ukrainians still control.
From the Russian point of view, capturing the area would be a significant step towards conquering the entire Donbass – one of the Kremlin’s war aims. In addition to regular Russian troops, various mercenary units also fight at Soledar, including the notorious private army Wagner.
Read here: War crimes in the Donbass – an outrageous brutalization
Why do the Russians desperately need an achievement in Soledar?
The small town is the point that Russia has chosen to Ukrainian advance in recent weeks to stop and regain tactical initiative on the battlefield. During the war, Russia suffered serious strategic defeats. At the beginning of the war, the Russians had to call off the advance on Kyiv. After that, the Ukrainians liberated the industrial metropolis Kharkiv in the west and the area around the city of Cherson in the south.
Taking Soledar would not only improve the conditions for an advance on the strategically important city of Bakhmut. War propaganda in Moscow would celebrate this as a great victory. The morale of the Russian troops is not good at the moment. The Russian government hopes that an invasion of Soledar will increase the willingness to fight and gain more support from its own population.
Also interesting: Heavy Weapons: These countries help Ukraine the most
More articles from this category can be found here: Politics
