Ukraine
\nRussia said its forces had wrested control of the war-scarred town of Soledar in east Ukraine, its first claim of victory in months of battlefield setbacks, but Ukraine said fierce fighting was still underway.
\nBoth sides have conceded heavy losses in the battle for the salt mining outpost, with Moscow desperate to sell any win back home after repeated humiliations and Ukraine determined to hold \u2014 and win back \u2014 ground.
\nThe Russian defence ministry announced it had \u201ccompleted the liberation\u201d of Soledar late the previous day and that the victory would pave the way for more \u201csuccessful offensive operations\u201d in the Donetsk region.
\nIn a separate statement, it praised the \u201ccourageous and selfless\u201d forces of mercenary group Wagner for storming Soledar.
\nThe nod was an unusual recognition of the controversial force following talk of infighting and rivalry between Wagner and the official military.
\nThe founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, insists that his force spearheaded the offensive for Soledar.
\n\u2018Where should we go?\u2019
\nKyiv dismissed Russia\u2019s announcement and said \u201csevere fighting\u201d was ongoing in Soledar, an industrial town with a pre-war population of about 10,000 now reduced to rubble.
\nUkraine\u2019s Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said earlier that Russia had moved most of its forces around Donetsk to capture Soledar. \u201cThis is a difficult phase of the war,\u201d she said.
\nIn Siversk, a town north of Soledar that could be next in line for the Russian advance, artillery echoed around the battered buildings dotted with a few remaining residents and Ukrainian military personnel braving light snow and freezing wind.
\nOleksandr Sirenko, who was chopping window frames and floors from destroyed flats into smaller pieces for firewood, said he did not want Kyiv\u2019s troops to retreat.
\n\u201cYou know, I\u2019ve been afraid of many things in my life,\u201d he told AFP. \u201cWe only hope they don\u2019t retreat. We hope, we hope. We are afraid, but where should we go?\u201d
\nStepping stone to Bakhmut?
\nCapturing Soledar could improve the position of Russian forces as they push toward what has been their main target since October, the nearby transport crossroads of Bakhmut.
\nThe Russian defence ministry said Friday that Soledar\u2019s capture \u201cmakes it possible to cut off supply routes of Ukrainian troops\u201d there and surround them.
\nThe US-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian information operations have \u201coverexaggerated\u201d the importance of Soledar.
\n\u201cBut this small-scale victory is unlikely to presage an imminent encirclement of Bakhmut,\u201d it cautioned.
\nIt said the fight for Soledar had likely heavily taxed Russian battlefield resources, constraining its ability to quickly move on to larger Bakhmut to the south.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine Russia said its forces had wrested control of the war-scarred town of Soledar in east Ukraine, its first claim of victory in months of battlefield setbacks, but Ukraine said fierce fighting was still underway. Both sides have conceded heavy losses in the battle for the salt mining outpost, with Moscow desperate to sell any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-307522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n