Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
The salt mining town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine has fallen to Russian forces, Moscow’s defense ministry claimed Friday, after three days of relentless bloodshed for control of the settlement which the Kremlin sees as strategically important.
While Ukraine has denied the claims, the capture of Soledar would represent Russia’s first significant battlefield victory after six months of humiliating pushbacks and failures. The town has been targeted by Russian troops in a bid to cut off supply routes to the nearby city of Bakhmut, the defense ministry said.
“In the evening of 12 January, the city of Soledar, that is of great importance for continuing successful offensive operations in Donetsk direction, was liberated,” the ministry said in a statement. “The establishment of full control of Soledar allows [us] to block the supply routes of Ukrainian forces in the city of [Bakhmut] located to the southwest, as well as to block and to pocket the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) that still remain there.”