Russian President Vladimir Putin estimated that the military campaign in Ukraine was following a "
positive dynamic
" after the announcement of the capture of the city of Soledar (east), still denied by Kiev.
"
Everything is going according to the plans of the Ministry of Defense and the general staff
," he added.
I hope that our fighters will still delight us more than once with their military results
,” he said in an interview with Russian state television, which aired on Sunday.
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Asked about the tarmac of an airport, near the Russian presidential plane, he answered the question of a journalist from the Rossia-1 channel asking him about the “
news coming from Soledar
”, which the Russian army has claimed Friday to have conquered.
Bakhmout objective
The capture of this modest locality was presented to Moscow as a victory, after several months of disappointments, in particular the withdrawal from the Kharkiv region (east) and the large city of Kherson (south) in the face of Ukrainian counter-offensives.
According to the Russian army, the conquest of Soledar, where there are important salt mines which could theoretically make it possible to protect equipment and to infiltrate behind enemy lines, is a step to encircle the neighboring city of Bakhmout, which Moscow has been trying to conquer for months.
