Moscow Says It Has Seized Ukrainian Town of Soledar

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Moscow’s forces had completed the capture of Soledar overnight, as Ukrainian officials said battles were continuing for control of the eastern town.

In its operational briefing on Friday, the ministry said Russian forces were able to capture Soledar after constantly bombarding Ukrainian positions. Russian forces spearheaded by Wagner Group, a private paramilitary organization, had advanced into Soledar in recent days after shifting their firepower there following months of failed attempts to seize the nearby city of Bakhmut.

Ukrainian officials, however, said fighting for control of the town is ongoing. 

Hanna Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, wrote on Telegram on Friday that Russians are still pushing hard to take the town.

“The night in Soledar was hot, battles continue,” she wrote. “Our fighters are bravely trying to hold the defense. This is a difficult phase of the war, but we will win.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky convened a meeting of top security officials on Thursday at which the situation in Bakhmut and Soledar received special attention. “The units defending these cities will be supplied with ammunition and everything else necessary promptly and without interruption,” he said in his nightly address on Thursday.

Andrey Bayevsky, an official for the Russian-installed government in the Donetsk region, where Soledar is located, told Russian state media on Thursday that the capture of Soledar would allow Russian forces to attack larger cities in the region, including Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as Bakhmut.

“Soledar opens the way for artillery fire toward [Slovyansk], Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka,” he said.

On Thursday, Mr. Bayevsky told a state-media talk show that some pockets of Ukrainian resistance remained in the town.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russian airborne units were instrumental in capturing Soledar by making “a covert maneuver” and attacking and blocking the town from the north and the south sides.

His statement contradicted claims by Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who said Wednesday that fighters from the paramilitary group alone had captured Soledar. On Friday, Mr. Prigozhin said he would refrain from commenting for the time being on the capture. He also said, without directly referencing Russia’s Defense Ministry, that there are some who “constantly try to steal victory from Wagner.”

Some Russian analysts were quick to give Wagner praise for Russia’s claim of victory in Soledar.

“Wagner now looks like the most combat-ready unit of the Russian military forces,” said Sergei Markov, director of the pro-Kremlin Institute for Political Studies in Moscow. “The Wagnerization of the Russian army is on the agenda.”

Western officials and analysts have been more skeptical about the strategic importance of Soledar, a town of barely 5 square miles.

“Capturing Soledar helps the Russians, but it doesn’t really change the overall calculation…and they are paying far too high a price to get this ground,” said Ed Arnold, a former British infantry officer now at the Royal United Services Institute, a London defense-and-security think tank.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote Thursday that it was likely that Russian forces had taken control of Soledar this week.

Mr. Zelensky’s statement on Thursday that Ukrainian forces maintained positions in the town could be referring to defensive positions near but not inside Soledar, the think tank said. Still, according to ISW, the capture of Soledar would unlikely lead to the encirclement of Bakhmut.

John Kirby, an assistant to the U.S. secretary of defense, said Thursday that the capture of Soledar—or even Bakhmut—wouldn’t change the overall direction of the war.

“It certainly isn’t going to stop the Ukrainians or slow them down in terms of their—their efforts to regain their territory,” he said. “If you look at what’s been happening over the last 10 and a half months, particularly in the Donbas, towns and villages have swapped hands quite frequently.”

Ukrainian officials are hoping that the arrival of materiel from the West could again turn the tide of the war in their favor, just as the arrival of long-range rocket systems from the U.S. reshaped the conflict last summer.

The U.S. military is expected to announce during a meeting in Germany on Jan. 20 that it plans to provide Ukraine with Strykers, eight-wheeled armored vehicles that could help Ukrainian troops advance faster on the battlefield and take back territory, defense officials said. Strykers can hold as many as 11 people and travel at up to 60 miles an hour.

It is unclear how many Strykers the U.S. would send to Ukraine. The Ukrainians are expected to form armored units to best deploy them, defense officials said.

Some European countries have pledged to send armored infantry vehicles, while the U.S. has offered Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which resemble a tank but with a smaller gun. France’s armed forces minister, Sebastien Lecornu, said Friday that the country is hoping to deliver AMX 10-RC light combat tanks to Ukraine in two months’ time. He added that France was also planning to train Ukrainian troops on how to use the tanks.

Meanwhile, a Russian Foreign Ministry official warned that Belarus could enter the conflict in Ukraine if Kyiv were to make any move on Belarus or on Russia.

In recent weeks, forces have been massing near the Ukrainian border in Belarus, leading Ukrainian officials to warn of another possible invasion from the north.

Although Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has signaled that he isn’t planning to promise troops to Moscow, he allowed Moscow to use Belarus as a staging ground in its invasion of Ukraine last year.

Since then, Russia and Belarus have held a series of joint military drills, highlighting the close partnership between the two nations and stirring concern that President Vladimir Putin is moving to draw Moscow’s closest ally into the war.