Russia's Defense Ministry announced the capture of Soledar
, adding that Moscow forces had "killed over 700 Ukrainian soldiers" in the past three days of fighting.
The ministry specifies that Russian troops took control of Soledar yesterday evening and that the conquest of the city, in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk, allows the supply routes of the Ukrainian troops to be cut also for the city of Bakhmut, 15 kilometers to the south , and then to surround them.
"Moscow plans to create an army of 2 million soldiers"
: this is the alarm raised by the Ukrainian defense intelligence (GUR) based on the extent of the mobilization underway in Russia.
300,000 people were enlisted in the first recruitment, Kiev intelligence recalled, as reported by Rbc-Ukraine.
The GUR does not now rule out Moscow announcing another mobilization in the coming days and believes that this time another 500,000 Russians will join the armed forces.
According to the Gur, the extent of these measures indicates Moscow's plans to create an army of about two million people compared to the previous goal of 1.5 million soldiers.
Ukraine is now "de facto a member of NATO",
according to
Defense Minister Olekskii Reznikov is convinced that Kiev will soon receive weapons such as tanks and fighter planes that the Atlantic Alliance has so far refused to supply for fear of an escalation with Moscow.
"These concerns about escalation are just a matter of etiquette for me," he added.
Russian-backed troops have almost full control of Soledar
, said an official installed by the Russian government in Donetsk, Andrey Baevsky, adding that there are still "small pockets of resistance" from Ukraine in the city.
“At present, indeed, there are still separate small pockets of resistance in Soledar, but our guys continue to crush the enemy in these places,” said the lieutenant colonel and deputy of parliament of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
"In general, the operation has developed successfully and the western outskirts of Soledar are already completely under our control," he concluded.
From Kiev, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar
claims that Ukrainian forces are resisting a "high-intensity" Russian offensive: "The enemy has sent almost all its main forces towards the Donetsk region and is maintaining an offensive high intensity,” Maliar said on Telegram.
"This is a difficult phase of the war", she added, underlining that "the fighting continues".
'They have abandoned us'. T
he dramatic testimony entrusted to CNN is from a Ukrainian soldier in Soledar.
The military, which the American broadcaster does not identify for security reasons, says that the soldiers remaining in the city of Donbass attacked by the Russians are running out of food, with little water and only some ammunition.
"The last evacuation - he adds - took place three days ago. They told us they would make us withdraw, and now we have simply been abandoned".
“We hold on as much as possible, but everyone can get tired and eventually cross the line,” concludes the soldier.
Meanwhile, in its report published yesterday,
the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
writes that "geolocated footage released on January 11 and 12 indicate that Russian forces probably control most, if not all, of Soledar and they probably pushed the Ukrainian forces out of the western outskirts of the settlement".
Furthermore, explains the ISW, Russian military bloggers "published on January 12 footage of Wagner Group fighters walking freely in Soledar and claimed to have visited the settlement together with Russian forces".
