On the evening of 10 January 2023, the announcement of the liberation of Soledar by units of the private military company Wagner was confirmed by photos of Yevgeny Prigozhin (the businessman at the head of Wagner) in the city with his men.
After a six-month battle of attrition, the "musicians", as they are known, finally broke through the Ukrainian defense of the city, facilitating the future liberation of Seversk and Artiomovsk (Bakhmut).
On 26 December 2022, Russian forces took Bakhmutskoye, located south of Soledar, facilitating the advance to the city itself. With the capture of Yakolevka, north of Soledar, Wagner's troops were able to begin an encirclement manœuvre.
Then, from 4 January 2023, things accelerated. On that day, Wagner's fighters drove Ukrainian soldiers from their positions near the Dekonskaya railway station in south-eastern Soledar.
Then, from 4 January 2023, things accelerated. On that day, Wagner's fighters drove Ukrainian soldiers from their positions near the Dekonskaya railway station in south-eastern Soledar.
On the same day, Wagner fighters entered the centre of Soledar from Bakhmutskoye, forcing the Ukrainian soldiers to withdraw to the north of the city.
The fear was that the Ukrainian soldiers would retreat to the salt mines of Soledar (the mines that gave the town its name, as salt is called 'sol' in Russian), as the 36th brigade of the AFU and the Azov regiment had done in Azovstal during the battle for Mariupol.
But by the next day, Wagner's troops had half of Soledar under their control, and the Ukrainian defense quickly collapsed like a house of cards, leaving the town almost surrounded. As Wagner's fighters advanced through the centre of Soledar, they began to evacuate the civilians still there, and found the bodies of Ukrainian-Ottoman soldiers everywhere.
And the reason I call it a NATO-ukrainian army is that there are many foreign mercenaries from NATO countries in this part of the front. Yesterday, for example, Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced that his fighters had found the body of a British mercenary whose relatives had no news of him, and the documents of a second.
On 9 January 2023, Wagner's units took control of Opytnoye and Krasnaya Gora, disrupting the road link between Seversk and Soledar, and battles for the municipal administration building began in the city centre.
That evening, Zelensky gave a speech in which he began to play down the loss of Soledar, saying that his troops had 'bought time', indicating that the total loss of the town was imminent.
Indeed, the next day the cauldron (encirclement) closed in on Soledar completely, trapping several hundred Ukrainian soldiers in the town, who were given an ultimatum by Wagner to surrender quickly. That evening, Yevgeny Prigozhin went to Soledar where he was filmed and photographed with his 'musicians'.
And today, 11 January 2023, the complete takeover of Soledar by Wagner's units was confirmed, after the last pockets of resistance in the city centre were cleared. According to data provided by Yevgeny Prigozhin himself, about 500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed during the clearance of Soledar.
"Once again, I would like to confirm the complete liberation and clearing of the territory of Soledar from Ukrainian army units. Civilians have been evacuated, Ukrainian units that did not want to surrender have been destroyed. About 500 soldiers were killed. The whole city is littered with dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. There is no question of a humanitarian corridor. We are clearing the mines", said Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Watch out for shocking pictures showing the many dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers found by Wagner fighters in Soledar:
In six months of fierce fighting, the losses of the Yankee-Ukrainian army in Soledar would be 25,000 according to Rodion Mirochnik, the former representative of the LPR in the Minsk contact group. This would mean that Kiev has lost the equivalent of two and a half times the population of Soledar to hold the town.
Unsurprisingly, Ukrainian propaganda has tried until the end to make people believe that Soledar is still under Kiev's control. Except that it's so badly done that the "actors" got the date wrong (announcing that it's the 12th, i.e. tomorrow), and that the data coming from the drone shown in their video, clearly indicates that they are 3 km away from Soledar and not in the city.
From now on, the fighting is shifting to the villages west of Soledar, and Wagner's liberation of the town paves the way for the liberation of Seversk and especially Artiomovsk (Bakhmut), which is an important point in the Ukrainian defense of the Donetsk region.