Russia strives for first big gains in months

Britain said yesterday Russia had probably captured most of a salt mining town in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv accused Moscow of sacrificing wave upon wave of soldiers and mercenaries in a horrific and senseless battle over wasteland.
The British Defence Ministry said Russian troops and fighters of Wagner, a mercenary company run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, “are likely in control of most of the settlement” of Soledar after four days of advances.
If confirmed, it would be Russia’s most substantial gain since last August, after a series of humiliating retreats throughout much of the second half of 2022. Russian forces have been fighting for months to capture the nearby larger city of Bakhmut, a few kilometres to the southwest.
But any victory would come at a massive cost, with troops from both sides having taken heavy losses in some of the most intense combat since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago. Kyiv has released pictures in recent days showing what it says are scores of Russian soldiers strewn dead in muddy fields.
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut would be a major step to taking full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, one of four provinces it claimed to have annexed two months ago.
Russia’s defence ministry did not mention either Soledar or Bakhmut in a media briefing on Monday.
“Russia’s Soledar axis is highly likely an effort to envelop Bakhmut from the north and to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication,” the British defence ministry said in a short daily intelligence briefing.
In an overnight address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the situation in Soledar was “difficult”, but said Ukrainian defenders had bought more time by holding on, and Kyiv would eventually drive Russians out of the entire eastern Donbas industrial region.
“And what did Russia want to gain there? Everything is completely destroyed, there is almost no life left. And thousands of their people were lost: the whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes,” he said. “This is what madness looks like.”
Near Bakhmut, a team of Ukrainian soldiers was firing volleys of shells from a heavy anti-aircraft gun at what they said were Russian ground positions, across a barren snowy field.
Serhiy Cherevaty, spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, said the Russians were deploying their best Wagner fighters at Soledar, which had been struck 86 times by artillery over the past 24 hours.
He compared Russian tactics to World War One: throwing large numbers of men into ground battle and absorbing heavy losses.
“This is basically not a 21st-century war,” he said.