Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Jan 12 (AFP/APP):Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said fighting is still raging in a key eastern frontline city that a Russian mercenary group earlier said it controlled, as Moscow announced a new military commander in Ukraine.
The fate of Soledar in eastern Ukraine was uncertain after Russian group Wagner claimed it controlled the gateway town — but the Kremlin cautioned against declaring victory prematurely.
In his daily address Wednesday, Zelensky insisted the front was “holding”.
“The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend” to have achieved some successes in Soledar, Zelensky said, “but the fighting continues”.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have said the battle has been long and brutal. If Soledar did fall to Moscow’s forces, it would be Russia’s first significant territorial gain in Ukraine for months.
The war-battered salt mining town in the eastern Donetsk region lies about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bakhmut, a larger urban hub that Russia has been trying to seize.
The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed Wednesday that his forces had “taken control of the whole territory of Soledar” and “urban battles” were fought in the city centre.
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.
The Ukrainian military said the pictures were taken elsewhere.
The Russian defence ministry urged caution, saying it was best to wait for “official announcements”.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday that the United States could not confirm accounts that Soledar had fallen and the city had “gone back and forth a number of times, and it really is some pretty brutal fighting”.
On 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.
But “nobody is planning to give up the city”, the 27-year-old, who goes by the nom de guerre Bober (Beaver), told AFP.
Zaporizhzhia, to the southwest of Soledar, has also been a target of fresh Russian strikes that damaged infrastructure and sparked fires, city council secretary Anatoliy Kourtev said early Thursday on Telegram.
“As a result of the shelling, houses of civilians were damaged again. According to preliminary information, no one was injured,” he said.
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