What is known about Soledar?
Soledar is a small town with about 10 thousand people living here before the full-scale invasion of Russia and one of the largest salt mining sites. Soledar is located 10 kilometres north of Bakhmut. It is these two settlements that are currently receiving the most attention. While the Russian Ministry of Defence claims Soledar is allegedly captured, the Ukrainian side reports the ongoing fighting.
In this article, we explain the strategic importance of Soledar and what is happening there now.
What is going on?
On the evening of January 10, the head of the PMC, Wagner Yevhen Prigozhin, reported that the entire territory of Soledar had allegedly been taken under the control of his units. However, the Russian Ministry of Defence stated that Soledar was allegedly captured only on the evening of January 12.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that as of 18:00 on January 13, the fighting for Soledar is still ongoing.
Russian propaganda and controversy
The Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, jointly with the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, warned about the Russian disinformation campaign regarding the situation in Soledar. Russia's propaganda actively uses information noise: it deliberately overloads with numerous fakes to "blur" the existing situation on the battlefield.
Analysts of the Center have recorded the escalation of the conflict between the Russian Ministry of Defence and the head of the PMC Wagner - the Ministry of Defence denied Prigozhin's statements about the alleged capture of Soledar and the fighting exclusively by the forces of Wagner.
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also report that Russian information operations exaggerate the significance of Soledar, which at best is Russia's Pyrrhic tactical victory - one that inflicts such devastating losses on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat.
Why do Russians need Soledar?
"They desperately need at least some victory because they do not have any, except for February 24, 2022, when they unexpectedly managed to enter the settlements with large forces, from most of which they were essentially knocked out. Also, Soledar is the area of responsibility of Wagner, which seeks to acquire a certain subjectivity," said Colonel Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman of the Ukrainian Defence Forces of the Eastern direction, during the teleconference.
Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the BBC that Wagner's troops were advancing "wave after wave" and that Prigozhin was interested in the possible economic benefits of capturing the city, home to Europe's largest salt mines.
Reznikov said the Wagnerites "need to provide some evidence to show that they are better than the regular Armed Forces of the Russian Federation." If captured, Bakhmut could pave the way for a Russian offensive on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.
Head of the Center for Military and Legal Studies, Oleksandr Musiienko, explains that the Wagnerites, who have been unsuccessfully fighting near Bakhmut for several months, are trying to grab at least something.
"Just before the New Year, they tried to storm Bakhmut again but only got beyond the first line of defence — then our forces pushed them back. Finally, they accepted that they could not take Bakhmut and went to Soledar. Secondly, this is how the Russians want to go around Bakhmut from the north and try to surround the city. They can disrupt the logistics of our forces, but it is not critical," Musiienko said.
The Russian Defence Ministry claims that the seizure of Soledar allegedly allows them to cut off supplies to the Ukrainian military in Bakhmut and surround the Ukrainian forces remaining in the city.
ISW assesses that the capture of Soledar will not allow Russian forces to control critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication with Bakhmut, nor will it improve the position of Russian troops to surround the city.
