The fate of a devastated salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday in one of the bloodiest battles of Russia’s invasion, while Ukraine’s unflagging resistance and other challenges prompted Moscow to shake up its military leadership again.
Russian forces used jets, mortars and rockets to bombard Soledar in an unrelenting assault.
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. Both communities are in Donetsk province, which Russia claims to have annexed.
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. The Kremlin also stopped short of claiming victory and acknowledged heavy casualties.
Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk province, which together make up the Donbas region bordering Russia, were Moscow’s main stated territorial targets in invading Ukraine, but the fighting has stood mostly at a stalemate.
In an apparent recognition of battlefield setbacks, Russia ordered its top general on Wednesday to take charge of its faltering invasion, the biggest shake-up yet of its malfunctioning military command structure.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as overall commander of forces for the invasion.
The move not only made Gerasimov directly accountable for the fate of the campaign but also in effect demoted Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the man moved into the position just three months ago.
Mathieu Boulegue at think-tank Chatham House in London said that in shifting Gerasimov, Putin could be trying to increase “manual control” over management of the war and deflect criticism by pro-war ultra-nationalists inside and outside the Kremlin.
Incoming artillery relentless: witness
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, incoming artillery fire was relentless, and there was chaos in field hospitals.
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.
“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.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s owner, on Wednesday repeated a claim he had made the day before that Ukrainian forces had been defeated in Soledar.
“Once again I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar from units of the Ukrainian army,” Prigozhin wrote on his Russian social media platform. “Civilians were withdrawn. Ukrainian units that did not want to surrender were destroyed.”
He claimed about 500 people were killed and that “the whole city is littered with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers.”
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 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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked Wagner’s claims to have seized part of Soledar, saying fighting was still ongoing.
“The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend that part of our town of Soledar … is some sort of a
Russian possession,” he said in a video address. “But fighting continues. The Donetsk theatre of operations is holding.”
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.
- 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.”
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