The Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying: “Soldar is still surrounded from the north and south by units of the Russian Airborne Forces. The Russian Air Force carries out raids on enemy strongholds. The attacking forces are engaged in battles inside the city.”
The army statement said that Moscow’s forces had captured the village of Bedhorodny near Bakhmut.
Yevgeny Prigozhin of the Wagner Group issued a statement late Tuesday saying his units had “taken control of all of Solidar’s territory. I would like to stress once once more that no other units participated in the storming of Solidar except for the private military company Wagner.”
The Kremlin also said on Wednesday that it was making “progress” in military operations around Solidar and that its forces were enjoying “positive momentum”, but a Kremlin spokesman did not confirm the city’s fall.
Kyiv said earlier that its forces are steadfast. A morning communiqué from the Ukrainian military made only one mention of Solidar, naming the city as one of several bombed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian army had denied the fall of the town of Solidar in the hands of Russian forces.
“Soledar is not under the control of the Russian army,” Serhiy Chervaty, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the east, told local media.
Separately, he told the BBC Ukraine that “fighting is still going on” in Solidar.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group had said last night that the Russian forces had taken control of the city, although he said that fighting was still taking place in the city center.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify the allegations.
The Strategic Communications Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine accused the Russian private military company Wagner of waging psychological warfare.
The center said on the Telegram website that the photo, which was said to show the head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the salt caves in the town of Solidar, Donetsk region, was taken in another region.
The center published a picture of the salt caves near Volodymyrivka, in the Donetsk region, to prove what it says.
The center added: “It seems that Prigozhin’s whereregardings do not correspond to reality, and he is not in the Solidar mines.”
“It is an element of psychological warfare by PR specialists in Prigozhin, targeting the local public to justify the heavy losses among the convicts recruited by Wagner,” he said.
Wagner said it had captured Solidar and Ukrainian forces were cordoned off there.
But a prominent Ukrainian military blogger, Yury Butusov, who is currently in Solidar alongside Ukrainian forces, said on Facebook on the evening of January 10 that “our forces are not surrounded”.
image copyright Archyde.com
Both sides said the battle for Solidar was intense and bloody. Its fall will represent a major victory for Moscow’s forces.
Solidar is located in the Donetsk region, 15 kilometers from the city of Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying to control for months.
But the businessman linked to the Kremlin added that “urban battles are raging in the city centre.”
He also said that the “number of prisoners” would be announced on Wednesday.
He posted a picture of himself in military uniform surrounded by Wagner fighters, without mentioning its location.
Conflicting reports
Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti, published another photo of Prigozhin with armed fighters, saying it was taken in the salt mines of Solidar.
Prigozhin said that Wagner’s units stormed Solidar “exclusively”.
The Russian army has not yet commented on these reports.
Ukraine said this week that its fighters had withstood intense attacks on the city.
“Even following suffering huge losses, Russia is still madly trying to seize Solidar,” the Defense Ministry said in Kyiv late Tuesday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said there was a “difficult situation” in the Donetsk region in his daily evening address on Tuesday. He praised the “courage” of Ukrainian soldiers in defending Solidar.
Earlier this week, he said the fighting had devastated Solidar, saying: “Everything has been completely destroyed.”