The fate of a devastated salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday as Ukraine said its forces were holding out against a furious Russian onslaught in what has become one of the fiercest and most costly battles in the almost 11-month war.
Though unlikely to provide a turning point in the war, Soledar’s fall to Russian forces after months of Ukrainian defence would be a prize for the Kremlin, which has been starved of good news from the battlefield amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive in recent months. It would also offer Russian troops a strategic springboard for their efforts to encircle the nearby city of Bakhmut.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that airborne units had cut off Soledar from the north and south.
But Ukraine denied that the town, with a pre-war population of around 10,000, had fallen.
Incoming artillery relentless: witness
“Heavy fighting continues in Soledar,” Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram. “The enemy has again replaced its units after sustaining losses, has increased the number of Wagner fighters and is trying to burst through our forces’ defence and fully seize the city, but is not having success.”
The Kremlin also stopped short of claiming victory and acknowledged heavy casualties.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the situation in Soledar. But a Reuters photographer who has reached the outskirts in recent days said many residents had fled along roads out of the town in punishing cold.
She said plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the town and the incoming artillery fire was relentless. Ambulances were waiting to receive the wounded along the road from Soledar to Bakhmut, and there was chaos in field hospitals.
‘Small town with great significance,’ Russian TV says
Denis Pushilin, leader of the Russian-controlled part of Donetsk province, said Soledar’s capture would open a prospect of seizing more significant towns farther west in what Russia has recognized as the Donetsk People’s Republic — centre of Ukrainian heavy industry and one of the four provinces Russia claims to have annexed.
“And this is actually a turning point. Now preparations are underway for the moment we have been waiting for — the liberation of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” Pushilin said.
Soledar was the main item on Russian state television news, which rarely mentions Russian reverses. Combative talk-show host Olga Skabeyeva called it a “small town with great significance.”
Analysts were more equivocal.
Soledar’s fall would make “holding Bakhmut much more precarious for Ukraine,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia Studies at the CAN nonprofit research organization in Arlington, Va., noted Wednesday.
But the costly war of attrition, with expected heavy casualties, may make Russia’s victory as costly as a defeat.
“I don’t think the outcome at Bakhmut is that significant compared to what it costs Russia to achieve it,” Kofman said in a tweet.
The Institute for the Study of War says Russian forces are up against “concerted Ukrainian resistance” around Bakhmut.
“The reality of block-by-block control of terrain in Soledar is obfuscated by the dynamic nature of urban combat … and Russian forces have largely struggled to make significant tactical gains in the Soledar area for months,” the think-tank said.
The collapse of Soledar “would not mean the Ukrainian defensive line or front have collapsed and that it would be necessary to fall back to new defensive lines,” said Oleksandr Musiyenko, a Kyiv-based analyst.
The Wagner Group, which now reportedly includes a large contingent of convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has spearheaded the attack on Soledar and Bakhmut. Western intelligence has estimated that the Wagner Group constitutes up to a quarter of all Russian combatants in Ukraine.
Late Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, claimed in audio reports posted on his Russian social media platform that his forces had seized control of Soledar, though he also said that battles were continuing in a “cauldron” in the city’s centre.
Cavernous mines could hide troops, weapons
The Russian state news agency RIA said Wagner had taken over Soledar’s salt mines, and a photograph posted on Wagner’s Telegram channel appeared to show Prigozhin and his fighters inside a mine.
Soledar’s cavernous mines are owned by state-owned enterprise Artemsil, which dominated the Ukrainian salt market until it halted production a few months after Russia invaded. The mines reach a depth of 200-300 metres and have tunnels with a combined length of 300 kilometres, according a local tourist website.
The enterprise was once considered one of the largest in eastern Europe and exported salt to 20 countries. A hot air balloon was once flown inside one of the mines to demonstrate their depth.
The salt mines could serve as a commercially lucrative asset and also be used to store ammunition and weapons out of range of Ukrainian missiles.
A U.S. official said last week that Prigozhin was interested in taking control of salt and gypsum from mines near Bakhmut. Prigozhin has himself spoken of Bakhmut’s “underground cities,” saying they can hold troops and tanks.
A success in Soledar and Bakhmut would help Prigozhin, who has openly criticized Russia’s military leadership, to increase his clout at the Kremlin.
Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other Ukrainian provinces in September, but its troops have struggled to advance. After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November, the battle heated up around Bakhmut.
WATCH | CBC’s Chris Brown in Kyiv on the battle for Soledar:
The CBC’s Chris Brown is in Ukraine and reports on the intense fight for the eastern salt-mining town of Soledar, which is now under furious assault from Russia.
Other news from the war
- Russian forces continued their shelling elsewhere, including 13 settlements in and around Kharkiv region that were largely returned to Ukrainian hands in September and October, the Ukrainian military said.
- Ukraine introduced emergency power cuts in eastern and southeastern regions on Wednesday as low temperatures and difficult weather conditions stretched the country’s crippled energy system, officials said.
- Russia’s still making plenty of money from oil sales despite a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven major democracies. Researchers at Helsinki’s Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said the price cap and a ban on most oil shipments to Europe are costing Russia an estimated $172 million US a day. But Russia is still taking in around $688 million a day.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke in a recorded message at Tuesday night’s Golden Globes ceremony. “There will be no third World War,” Zelenskyy said, predicting Russia’s defeat. “It is not a trilogy.”
