CNN —
Russia on Friday said its forces had captured Soledar, a salt mining town in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv denied the claims.
Should Russian troops actually take the city, it would be Moscow’s first victory in the Donbass in months – possibly welcome news for President Vladimir Putin after a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.
Soledar’s importance in military terms is minimal and largely symbolic. However, its capture, if confirmed, would allow Russian forces, and particularly the Wagner mercenary group, to focus on nearby Bakhmut, which has been a target since the summer.
Taking Soledar would also be a PR win for the man running Wagner — the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has frequently criticized the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership on the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Here’s what you need to know about Soledar.
“We can’t take it any longer”: CNN speaks to Ukrainians living on the front lines
As is often the case with battlefield gains and losses, there are conflicting accounts from the Russian and Ukrainian sides of the success of the Russian advance on the city.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the capture of Soledar “became possible due to the constant destruction of the enemy by attacks and army aviation, missile troops and artillery by a group of Russian forces”.
“They constantly conducted concentrated attacks on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city and prohibited the movement of reserves, the supply of ammunition and attempts by the enemy to retreat to other lines of defense,” the statement said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not refer to Wagner’s claims that the private military company conducted the operation entirely itself.
“The complex of actions carried out by the Russian troop group ensured the successful offensive operations of the assault detachments to liberate Soledar. In the last three days alone, more than 700 Ukrainian soldiers and over 300 weapon units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed near the town of Soledar,” the ministry added.
Alexander Shatov, the head of the Russian-backed administration in Shakhtarsk in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said Moscow forces had evacuated about 100 people from Soledar to the city. He told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that 110 more people were expected on Friday.
However, Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Group of Ukrainian Armed Forces, told CNN that “Russian troops do not control Soledar.”
A Ukrainian soldier stationed in the town of Bakhmut told CNN that Kiev’s units are still on the “western outskirts” of Soledar.
Taras Berezovets, a captain in the First Brigade of Ukraine’s special forces, said it made no military sense to remain in Soledar as it was “completely destroyed”. He said he believed a decision to withdraw would be made in the coming days, but added that morale was high among front-line units.
He said his comrades in other units understood that the mission was to hold out as long as possible and kill as many Wagner Group fighters as possible, and that much of the fighting over the past two weeks was interspersed with street fighting in Soledar included small units of four to eight fighters.
Berezovets said that Ukrainian forces continued to inflict heavy casualties on the Russians. He claimed that a captured Wagner fighter told interrogators that only three out of 35 men on his platoon survived.
He had no knowledge of Ukrainian troops being trapped in Soledar and said units had been successfully withdrawn to the western outskirts near the railway station.
A CNN team outside of Soledar on Friday reported continued mortar and rocket fire. Ben Wedeman and his team, stationed about 2.5 miles from the city, witnessed on Friday Ukrainian forces disembarking troops in what appeared to be a fairly organized retreat. Wedeman said there was no panic among the Ukrainian troops.
Soledar is at the center of the Donbass region, the vast eastern Ukraine that Russia has been putting ahead of all other regions for its conquest since last summer. In fact, Moscow has considered it Russian territory since it (illegally) claims it annexed the entire Donetsk region – including the 40% or so that is outside Russian control.
It lies just a few kilometers northeast of the larger town of Bakhmut, which has become perhaps the most contested and dynamic part of Ukraine’s 1,300-kilometer frontline and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Soledar has therefore been a target of Russian forces since last May. With a pre-war population of about 10,000, it is of little strategic value in itself, but is an intermediate target on the Russians’ westward attrition. Moscow has been struggling to attack Bakhmut from the east for months, but should it capture Soledar, Moscow could at least approach the city by another route.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday said the city’s capture was “important for the continuation of successful offensive operations in the Donetsk region.”
The ministry added that “the establishment of control over Soledar will allow cutting off supply routes for Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut.”
The Soledar area is home to large salt mines owned by state-owned Artemsil, Europe’s largest salt producer, which ceased production shortly after the Russian invasion last February. The area surrounding the city harbors “extensive reserves of very pure salt, which have only been used industrially since 1881,” according to the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
Some have speculated that the Russians – and Wagner’s leader Prigozhin – were eyeing Soledar for its vast gypsum deposits. Prigozhin used Wagner as a mercenary in Africa and Syria for access to resources such as diamonds and oil.
But exploiting the famous Soledar salt mines would require heavy investment and a quieter environment than currently. Prigozhin said the vast network of tunnels created by mining offers “unique and historic defenses” and a “network of underground cities.”
Russian forces have had nothing to celebrate since early July and have been forced to retreat in both Kharkov in the north and Kherson in southern Ukraine.
Conquering Soledar would therefore be a rare advance, despite its now devastated state. But it would be more symbolic than material. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says control of Soledar “does not necessarily allow Russian forces to exercise control of critical Ukrainian ground links to Bakhmut,” the greater price.
“Even taking the most generous of Russian claims at face value, the capture of Soledar would not mean an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut,” the think tank added.
But Soledar is paramount for one man: Prigozhin. His Wagner fighters, many of them ex-prisoners, have suffered heavy casualties in a wave of ground attacks on a battlefield of trenches and mud reminiscent of World War I. After months in which the Russian Defense Ministry has delivered nothing but retreat, Prigozhin is keen to show his men are delivering.
Late Tuesday, Prigozhin said: “Wagner PMC detachments have taken control of the entire Soledar area. The city center is like a cauldron where urban fighting takes place.” And he added: “I would like to emphasize that no units other than Wagner PMC agents were involved in the storming of Soledar.”
The subtext of Soledar is the struggle for influence and resources between Prigozhin and his nemesis at the Defense Ministry, which intensifies as Prigozhin continues to ridicule what he calls the corrupt and incompetent military hierarchy.
A senior Ukrainian official on Friday called infighting between different factions of Russia’s power establishment “a boon for the start of the stunning end.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Ukraine’s presidential office, tweeted that a “public rumbling” had begun between the Russian Defense Ministry and “military-criminal ultras” like Progozhin and General Sergei Surovikin.
Ukrainian tactics could be to invite wave after wave of infantry attacks, knowing they can inflict heavy casualties on the enemy, a tactic used successfully in Vuhledar late last year. The Ukrainian command would then choose a moment to retreat to Bakhmut.
Ukraine’s 46th Brigade alluded to these tactics in an online post on Tuesday, saying, “The situation is very difficult but controllable: we are only giving up what we consider inexpedient.” Trying to hold Soledar — like trying to hold Lysychansk, the last base in the Lugansk region, last summer — becomes impractical as casualties mount and supplies become near impossible.
Ukraine has solid defenses in all parts of Donetsk it still holds – and has forced the Russians to expend vast amounts of ammunition to make minor advances.