![]() ![]() Moscow, meanwhile, announced it had put army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov in charge of the Ukraine conflict. On the road between Bakhmut and the city of Sloviansk further west, a wounded Ukrainian soldier waiting to be evacuated said fighting in Soledar was the toughest his brigade had seen.īut “nobody is planning to give up the city,” the 27-year-old, who goes by the nom de guerre Bober (Beaver), told AFP. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday that the United States could not confirm accounts that Soledar had fallen and the city had “gone back and forth a number of times, and it really is some pretty brutal fighting.” The Ukrainian military said the pictures were taken elsewhere.Īnd the Russian defense ministry urged caution, saying it was best to wait for “official announcements.” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published a photo it said had been taken in the salt mines of Soledar showing Prigozhin with armed fighters. The head of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed Wednesday that his forces had “taken control of the whole territory of Soledar” while “urban battles” were fought in the city center. The war-battered salt mining town in the eastern Donetsk region lies some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Bakhmut, a larger urban hub that Russia has been trying to seize. If it did fall to Moscow’s forces, that would mark Russia’s first significant territorial gain in Ukraine in months. “The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend” to have achieved some successes in Soledar, Zelensky said, “but the fighting continues.”īoth Moscow and Kyiv have said the battle for Soledar has been long and brutal. ![]() Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that fighting was still raging in a key eastern frontline city, and in his daily address, Zelensky insisted the front was “holding.” “The whole city is littered with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. “I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar,” Prigozhin said in a statement. Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said his forces had captured all of Soledar and killed about 500 Ukrainian soldiers after heavy fighting. The change effectively demoted General Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed only in October to lead the invasion and oversaw heavy attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as overall commander for what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, now in its 11th month. KRAMATORSK, Ukraine: Moscow named a new commander for its invasion of Ukraine while Russian private military firm Wagner Group said its capture of the salt mining town Soledar in eastern Ukraine was complete, though the Ukrainian military said the battle was not over.
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