Maliar said on the Telegram social messaging app: "Heavy fighting for the city of Soledar is ongoing in Donetsk Oblast. Russians continue to actively storm the city despite huge losses of personnel.”
She added, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda website: “Approaches to our positions are covered with the bodies of Russian soldiers. Only a very strong nation can fight so desperately with such a powerful enemy."
Maliar also said that Ukrainian forces “continue to hold the line courageously," Ukrainska Pravda reported.
'Russian forces have not captured the entirety of Soledar': ISW
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, reported on Tuesday night that Russian forces “conducted ground attacks across the Donetsk Oblast frontline,” making gains around the salt-mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut.
However, they “have not captured the settlement, despite false claims,” the ISW said.
In its latest analysis of the war in Ukraine, the US think tank also said: “Russian forces have not captured the entirety of Soledar despite several false Russian claims that the city has fallen and that Bakhmut risks imminent encirclement.”
According to the US experts, several Russian sources claimed that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group forces advanced into the west of Soledar on January 10.
However, the Wagner Group’s financier Yevgeny Prigozhin “refuted these claims, remarking that Wagner Group forces are still fighting against concerted Ukrainian resistance,” the ISW reported.
The US think tank added: “ISW has only observed visual confirmation of Wagner Group forces in central Soledar as of January 10. The reality of block-by-block control of terrain in Soledar is obfuscated by the dynamic nature of urban combat, however, and Russian forces have largely struggled to make significant tactical gains in the Soledar area for months.”
The ISW assessed that “even taking the most generous Russian claims at face value, the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut.”
The Washington-based think tank reiterated its assessment that “control of Soledar will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut.”
Wednesday is day 322 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Source: PAP, understandingwar.org, Ukrainska Pravda