KRAMATORSK, Ukraine: Moscow named a new commander for its invasion of Ukraine while Russian private military firm Wagner Group said its capture of the salt mining town Soledar in eastern Ukraine was complete, though the Ukrainian military said the battle was not over.
\nRussian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as overall commander for what Moscow calls its \u201cspecial military operation\u201d in Ukraine, now in its 11th month.
\nThe change effectively demoted General Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed only in October to lead the invasion and oversaw heavy attacks on Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure.
\nMeanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said his forces had captured all of Soledar and killed about 500 Ukrainian soldiers after heavy fighting.
\n\u201cI want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar,\u201d Prigozhin said in a statement.
\n\u201cThe whole city is littered with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that fighting was still raging in a key eastern frontline city, and in his daily address, Zelensky insisted the front was \u201cholding.\u201d
\n\u201cThe terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend\u201d to have achieved some successes in Soledar, Zelensky said, \u201cbut the fighting continues.\u201d
\nBoth Moscow and Kyiv have said the battle for Soledar has been long and brutal. If it did fall to Moscow\u2019s forces, that would mark Russia\u2019s first significant territorial gain in Ukraine in months.
\nThe war-battered salt mining town in the eastern Donetsk region lies some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Bakhmut, a larger urban hub that Russia has been trying to seize.
\nThe head of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed Wednesday that his forces had \u201ctaken control of the whole territory of Soledar\u201d while \u201curban battles\u201d were fought in the city center.<\/p>\n
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published a photo it said had been taken in the salt mines of Soledar showing Prigozhin with armed fighters.
\nThe Ukrainian military said the pictures were taken elsewhere.
\nAnd the Russian defense ministry urged caution, saying it was best to wait for \u201cofficial announcements.\u201d
\nUS Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday that the United States could not confirm accounts that Soledar had fallen and the city had \u201cgone back and forth a number of times, and it really is some pretty brutal fighting.\u201d
\nOn the road between Bakhmut and the city of Sloviansk further west, a wounded Ukrainian soldier waiting to be evacuated said fighting in Soledar was the toughest his brigade had seen.
\nBut \u201cnobody is planning to give up the city,\u201d the 27-year-old, who goes by the nom de guerre Bober (Beaver), told AFP.<\/p>\n
Moscow, meanwhile, announced it had put army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov in charge of the Ukraine conflict.
\nSergei Surovikin \u2014 the commander of Russia\u2019s forces in Ukraine for the past three months \u2014 will become Gerasimov\u2019s deputy, the defense ministry announced Wednesday.
\nAnalysts say that the competing statements around Soledar point to in-fighting among the Russian forces, who have been trying to capture the whole of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donbas region since failing to take Kyiv last year.
\nUkrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak told AFP he believed Russia was suffering \u201cenormous\u201d losses in the battle for the town but conceded that the Ukrainian side was also seeing casualties.
\nThe fighting there and in neighboring Bakhmut is the \u201cbloodiest\u201d of the war so far, he said.
\nEarlier this week, Zelensky said Soledar had been flattened by fighting and that everything was \u201ccompletely destroyed.\u201d
\nOn Wednesday, the president also said he had visited the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, near the border with EU member Poland, for talks on coordination and \u201cborder protection\u201d \u2014 including the situation on Ukraine\u2019s northern frontier with Belarus.
\nA close ally of Moscow, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to use his country as a launchpad for their invasion in February.<\/p>\n
After Belarus announced the establishment of a joint force with Moscow in the autumn, there had been fears of a frontline opening in the north. The fighting is currently concentrated in the east and south.
\nIn the southern region of Kherson on Wednesday, an exploding Russian shell started a fire at a maternity ward.
\n\u201cA powerful blast wave knocked out windows in the children\u2019s ward and damaged one of the doctors\u2019 offices,\u201d regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said, adding that one employee was injured.
\nIn the east, Russian strikes targeted Ukraine\u2019s second city Kharkiv on Tuesday, in the wake of a surprise visit by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
\nBaerbock vowed further German support for Kyiv, but her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, who accompanied her, said Berlin\u2019s refusal to send Kyiv battle tanks was costing lives.
\nLast week, French President Emmanuel Macron promised Zelensky that Paris would send French-made light tanks to Kyiv \u2014 making France the first Western country to deliver tanks to Ukraine, and putting pressure on Germany.
\nSeparately, Poland\u2019s President Andrzej Duda said Wednesday that Warsaw was ready to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but \u201cwithin an international coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine: Moscow named a new commander for its invasion of Ukraine while Russian private military firm Wagner Group said its capture of the salt mining town Soledar in eastern Ukraine was complete, though the Ukrainian military said the battle was not over. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday appointed Chief of the General […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-306995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n