The battle around the Ukrainian town of Soledar, in the Donetsk province, accumulates dozens of deaths every day.
The General Staff of the kyiv army has assured this Thursday that it has “eliminated” more than a hundred Russian soldiers in an attack in this town in eastern Ukraine, the scene of bloody house-to-house combat.
The Government affirms that it is resisting the Russian attack, led by the mercenaries of the Wagner group, which has claimed for days to have control of Soledar, something that Moscow has not confirmed.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, "thanks to the coordinated work of soldiers from the special operations forces, artillerymen and rocket launchers", it was possible to locate a location where Russian soldiers were concentrating to deal a new blow to Moscow.
The attack was carried out with Soviet Tochka-U short-range ballistic missiles, a weapon also used by Russia.
The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has affirmed, after meeting with the General Staff, that the units defending Soledar, and the nearby Bakhmut, will be supplied with "ammunition and everything necessary" in a "prompt and uninterrupted" way to prevent them from being taken by Russia.
"They are moving over their own corpses," Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar describes the situation, referring to the high number of casualties of Kremlin troops and Wagner's mercenaries.
"Russia is leading its own people to slaughter, but we maintain our positions [at the front]," the deputy minister insisted.
Meanwhile, Andrei Bayevsky, a puppet Kremlin political and military figure in Donetsk, acknowledged on Thursday that there remain "pockets of resistance" in Ukraine, although he has maintained that they control the western outskirts of the town.
The deaths on the Ukrainian side are also very high.
For the first time since the start of the war, soldiers of the defending army break the guidelines to avoid reporting casualties and share numerous videos of wounded comrades on their social networks.
"This is not the time to stop and rub your hands, the important thing is yet to come," said Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency.
Peskov added that Russia still has "a lot of work ahead" to "liberate" all the territory from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, illegally annexed by Moscow last September.
These statements come a day after the founder of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, wrote on his Telegram channel that the company's mercenaries have killed 500 Ukrainian soldiers in Soledar.
Soledar, satellite view
Soledar has been in most of its territory destroyed.
The combats are almost melee, building to building.
The kyiv authorities denounce that the municipality has been practically reduced to rubble by the Russian attacks, although the resistance actions of the defending army have also added to the destruction.
Satellite images from the Maxar company compare the before and after of the offensive: in a shot taken on August 1, an area of Soledar (11,000 inhabitants before the war) is seen with houses and green areas;
the same area, photographed by satellite on January 10, reveals the brutal destruction suffered.
In an interview for the
Pravda
newspaper , Sergeant Oleksandr Pohrebysky explained on Thursday that the fighting is so direct that the infantry on both sides can even hear each other when they talk to each other.
Pohrebysky assures that Wagner's men have been ordered not to go back a step, on pain of being arrested or even executed.
Pohbrebysky is a company commander of the Ukrainian 46th Airborne Brigade, the central column of the defense in Soledar.
This sergeant corroborates the criticisms repeated by other Ukrainian military and analysts in recent days: a fatal mistake in Soledar was the recent replacement of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade by less experienced infantry battalions.
This would have allowed, according to these sources, Wagner to succeed in his surprise offensive on January 6, Orthodox Christmas Eve, advancing on the east and west flanks of the township and coming close to completely encircling it.
Wagner's men would also have taken control of a large part of the Soledar salt mines, according to videos shared by their top officials, although the Ukrainian Armed Forces deny this.
These mines have 200 kilometers of tunnels that can be useful for storing military equipment safely against artillery fire.
Russian journalist and military analyst Sasha Kots said on Thursday that Soledar was already under control of the invader, although there is the possibility that a Ukrainian resistance group has taken cover in a sector of the salt mines.
This maneuver with heroic overtones would allow Russian fire to be concentrated on them and give the Ukrainian Armed Forces time to prepare a counterattack or reinforcement of the defenses outside Soledar.
Soledar is located on the Donetsk front line.
Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group arrived in the city center last week.
Ukrainian officers on the ground had confirmed in the past week that they were slowly backing down, and the Wagner group said on Wednesday it was in control of the town, though both kyiv and Moscow confirm fighting continues in their streets.
In fact, the position of the Ukrainian forces has improved in the last 24 hours, according to the testimonies of soldiers from the 46th Brigade made public, thanks to the reinforcement of the artillery.
This would have allowed the main access road to Soledar from Ukrainian-controlled territory to remain operational despite constant Russian shelling.
If Russia takes over the town, it would be the invader's first significant victory in the war since July.
The strategic importance of Soledar is that it would facilitate the siege of the neighboring city of Bakhmut, the main Russian objective in the province.
Wagner's channels said Wednesday that after months of fighting, his soldiers had managed to take Opytnoye, a suburb on the southern limits of Bakhmut.
Soldiers from two battalions stationed in this town, one infantry and the other artillery, told EL PAÍS that their biggest setback is the lack of ammunition: one of these soldiers, who asked to remain anonymous, pointed out on Wednesday that in the latter days, the intensity of the combat is so high that the bullets that used to fire in a week now consume them in four days.
Christopher Parry's corpse
The Wagner group has claimed to have found the body of Christopher Parry, one of the two British missing since January 6 in the municipality.
According to Progozhin's account, the deceased carried both his passport and that of the other missing person, Andrew Bagshaw, 48.
The businessman published the photographs of the alleged passports and a "volunteer certificate" of Parry.
The British Foreign Office has not been able to confirm this, but has told the BBC that it is in contact with the Ukrainian authorities.
The BBC explained that both were in the Donetsk province as volunteers helping in the evacuation of civilians from the towns near the front, where the hardest fighting of the war is currently taking place.
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