After months of hard fighting, the "Wagner Group" led by "Putin Cook" Prigozhin (Yevgeny Prigozhin) announced on the evening of January 10 that they had won the front line in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The small town of Soledar (Soledar) is likely to gain control of the Soledar Salt Mine Dungeon.
The underground city can be hundreds of meters deep underground, and the total length of various underground spaces is 200 kilometers. Some underground rooms have a floor height of 30 meters, which is very beneficial for underground marching and collecting personnel, soldiers and materials.
The scramble for Soledar is part of a Russian assault on the front-line city of Bakhmut over the past six months.
Soledar is located less than 10 kilometers northeast of Bakhmut and is within its jurisdiction. The capture of this town will allow the Russian army to try to build a siege network against Bakhmut.
Bakhmut is currently the only advance point for the Russian army. In the past few months, there have been fierce battles, and both sides have suffered heavy casualties.
In a "Wagner" film at the turn of the New Year, Prigozin inspected a makeshift morgue on the front line filled with dead soldiers.
The day before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the United States last month, he also visited the Bakhmut front line and sent a Ukrainian flag signed by local soldiers to the U.S. Congress to symbolize the resistance of Ukrainians.
In another video, Prigozin also openly acknowledges the difficulty of attacking Bakhmut.
"People want to know when we will be able to take Bahemut." "In Bahemut, every house is like a fortress. Sometimes we have to fight for a house for more than a day, and sometimes it takes more than a day." Fight for a few weeks, and behind this room, there is still another line of defense. Not just one. How many of these lines does Bachmut have? Five hundred is probably not an exaggeration."
[Pictured below: Prigozin and "Wagner" soldiers claimed to have taken photos inside the underground salt mine in Soledar to show that they had seized control of the town.
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The outside world has also been puzzled over the past few months as to why the Russian army has worked so hard to seize Bakhmut.
Bakhmut is of course Ukraine’s main line of defense. However, after Russia withdrew from Kharkiv in September and lost its northern offensive, even if the Russian army captured Bakhmut, Ukraine still had Slavs in Donetsk. The sister city of Slovyansk-Kramatorsk, a major defensive bastion, was only an inch away from taking the entirety of Donetsk.
Is this worth the loss of tens or hundreds of soldiers every day?
Why not find a more efficient marching strategy?
There have been various interpretations of this.
Prigozin once referred to Bahmut as a "meat grinder", which seems to be meant to consume Ukrainian soldiers.
However, judging from the information shown in the above mortuary clips, this meat grinder does not have "nationality discrimination"-the US sources pointed out that from the end of November to the beginning of December alone, "Wagner" had Nearly a thousand soldiers died.
After Bakhmut, there is the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk sister city defense line.
(Google Map screenshot)
Another quite popular theory is that Bakhmut has become a tool for Prigozin to prove his military value to Putin.
Since Prigozin established the "Wagner" Legion in 2014, he has been in a state of secret underground activities. It was not until September this year that the Russian army suffered repeated defeats. Husband (Ramzan Kadyrov) teamed up to launch a special attack on the Ministry of Defense system.
After months of defeats by the Russian army, if the "Wagner" led by Prigozin can help Russia capture Bakhmut, this will greatly increase Prigozin's status in the Russian establishment.
American officials have also put forward another argument a few days ago, that is, Prigozin has a financial interest in the salt and gypsum resources in the Bakhmut area - indeed, until last May, when the war stopped operations, Solledal is the largest salt producing area in Central and Eastern Europe.
Prigozin, however, denied this claim.
He recently cited a series of historical battles as an example, referring to Bakhmut as the location where the Russian and Ukrainian armies must eliminate each other, and also said that the salt mine tunnels around Bakhmut would be the "icing on the cake".
He claimed that the tunnels have been used to store weapons since the First World War, and described the salt mines as "a network of underground cities", saying that personnel, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles can also travel 80 to 100 meters underground.
For him, Bachmut is an "important logistics center".
A salt mine tunnel that can be used for underground marches.
(English Russia)
Indeed, underground salt mines are of certain value for local military deployment. The greenhouse in the tunnel is always at a level of 14 or 15 degrees Celsius, which can be used for soldiers to escape from the severe cold. Moreover, there is a large space in the tunnel, which was even used for hundreds of people. The symphony performance with the audience present can also be used for underground marching.
However, this military value can only be regional at best.
And because Bakhmut himself has limited influence on the overall situation of the Russia-Ukraine war, and even the direction of the Donetsk war, the actual impact of "Wagner" winning Soledar is actually very limited.
At this moment, Ukraine has not yet confirmed the loss of Soledar, but Zelensky mentioned in his routine speech on the 10th that the entire town of Soledar was destroyed. The perseverance of the Ukrainian army has won "more time and strength", which seems to have indirectly admit defeat.
According to the analysis of various parties, although Russia still wants to use Soledar to encircle Bakhmut, judging from the slow advance that Prigozin also admitted, there is still a long way to go to capture Bahemut, which is heavily defended. time distance.
On the other hand, Ukraine is increasingly preparing for a ground counterattack.
After France, Germany, and the United States announced last week that they would provide Ukraine with infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) that function like tanks, both France and Poland spoke to the media, expressing that they are pressuring the German government to allow exports to Ukraine as a NATO standard Equipped with a Leopard tank.
On the 10th, the United Kingdom also confirmed that it is considering providing Ukraine with another NATO standard tank "Challenger 2" (Challenger 2).
Ukraine has long requested the German-made Leopard tank.
(Wikimedia Commons)
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has always been more aggressive towards Russia, also made a surprise visit to Kharkov on the same day, saying that Germany will "further deliver weapons". (Olaf Scholz) public high-profile pressure.
On January 20, the Ukrainian National Defense Liaison Group with more than 50 countries will meet again to discuss aid plans for Ukraine. On the 22nd, all government officials from Germany and France will also hold the postponed summit between the two countries.
These time points may be the time for Germany to turn around and decide to export tanks that are beneficial for ground counterattacks to Ukraine.
Soledar's loss is certainly a failure on the Ukrainian battlefield, but after entering the new year, the overall situation of this war seems to be gradually developing in a direction that is beneficial to Ukraine.
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