“Everything that is happening today towards Bakhmout or Soledar is the bloodiest scenario of this war,” declared Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency.
Soledar, once known for its salt mines, is located near the larger city of Bakhmout which the Ukrainians have been defending fiercely for several months against waves of assaults from Russian forces.
Its capture would allow Moscow to finally brandish a military victory, after several humiliating setbacks since September, and for the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigojine, to reinforce his growing influence on the Russian political scene.
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“Assault forces are fighting in the city,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that “airborne units blocked the northern and southern parts” of the city.
“Russian aerospace forces strike enemy strongholds,” he added.
"More" weapons
The adviser to the Ukrainian presidency again reiterated kyiv's calls to receive "more" Western weapons and military equipment, so as to end the war in the coming months.
"Only missiles with a range of more than 100 km will allow us to significantly accelerate the disoccupation of territories", which will lead to the end of the war "either at the end of spring or at the beginning of summer, either summer, or probably fall,” he said.
However, he promised that kyiv would not use these weapons to attack targets on Russian territory.
“We are waging an exclusively defensive war,” he said.
“We still want to obtain 250 to 300 to 350 heavy tanks,” the official reminded us again, while Western chancelleries are slow to respond favorably to kyiv's requests on this point.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Lviv on Wednesday, in particular to pay tribute to soldiers who have died in combat since February 2022 and are buried in a cemetery in this large western city.
