Soledar is 'Verdun for 21st century' says top Ukraine official as he denies Russians have control
Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, has described the situation in Bakhmut and Soledar as the “battle of Verdun in the 21st century”.
The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle of the first world war, and led to huge casualties.
Yermak said:
The situation is difficult, even very difficult. This is the battle of Verdun in the 21st century. The fighting has been going on for several months, but our fighters manage to hold their positions.
The Russians release criminals from prisons who die as soon as they reach the frontline. Their bodies are left in place, they are not even removed, there are many human losses on the Russian side, much more than ours. We clearly value the lives of our soldiers more.
But before us is a human mass that is constantly attacking, attacking, attacking. Soledar is a place of street battles, wherever one of the parties does not control the city. The Russians are there, but they do not control the city. The situation is complicated, but our goal is to liberate our territories, fully restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Here is a summary of the latest developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as we close the blog for today:
Ukraine has denied Russia’s claim that Putin’s forces have captured Soledar. On Friday, as Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken full control of the salt mining town. Ukrainian officials denied the Russian claim, suggesting they were still holding on and counterattacking, with the Ukrainian military spokesperson Serhii Cherevatyi reporting “ongoing battles”.
Soledar is ‘Verdun for 21st century’ according to a top Ukraine official. Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the president of Ukraine, likened the fight for the town to the longest and bloodiest battle in the first world war.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut and Soledar in the east would be armed with everything they need to keep Russian troops at bay in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
Hundreds of civilians remain trapped in Soledar, Ukraine has said. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, told Ukrainian state TV that 559 civilians remained in Soledar, including 15 children, and could not be evacuated.
Satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies show the destruction inflicted upon Soledar. The Guardian has a series of striking images from inside the eastern Ukrainian town.
Ukraine is confident Britain will announce it plans to send about 10 Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv shortly, a move it hopes will help Germany finally allow its Leopard 2s to be re-exported to the embattled country. A formal announcement is anticipated on Monday but Ukrainian sources indicated they understood that Britain had already decided in favour.
President Vladimir Putin’s move to replace his top commander in Ukraine after a few months is a sign of military disarray and his growing impatience in a war Russia is not winning, analysts said. The defence ministry in Moscow said Wednesday it had, again, replaced its top commander in Ukraine, putting army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov in charge. It is the latest of several major shake-ups of Moscow’s military leadership.
Germany will continue to “weigh every step carefully” and consult with its allies on further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. The German leader is facing mounting pressure to approve German-made battle tanks for Kyiv. Scholz said Berlin would keep its “leading position” as one of Kyiv’s top supporters but said he had no intention of being rushed on “such serious things that have to do with peace and war, with the security of our country and of Europe”.
A US envoy has called for Serbia to sign on to sanctions against Russia. Counselor Derek Chollet expressed strong concern on Thursday about the activities of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group and its alleged attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and elsewhere in the world.
A former Russian deputy minister of defence has suggested the country could increase the upper age limit for conscription from 27 to 30 for this year’s spring draft campaign. Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma defence committee, suggested the change could take place without altering the lower bar for conscription of 18 years.
A US navy veteran has been released after almost a year in Russian detention, according to his family. Taylor Dudley, 35, of Michigan, was taken into custody by Russian border police last April after crossing the border from Poland into Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania.
A Ukrainian soldier has had successful surgery to remove an unexploded grenade from his chest, senior officials in Kyiv have said. Surgeons removed the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman, while two sappers ensured the operation was conducted safely, said Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence.
In comments issued through his press service on Friday, and apparently aimed at Russia’s defence establishment, Yevgeny Prigozhin – the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group – complained about “infighting, corruption, bureaucracy and officials who want to stay in their positions” and what he called constant attempts to “steal victory” from his organisation.
Prigozhin, who has harshly criticised the failings of the regular army, issued a premature claim earlier this week that Soledar had already fallen, and said the fighting there was exclusively being waged by his men – the Wagner mercenary group.
Ukraine has denied Russian forces have seized control of Soledar and said its forces were holding out.
In response to Prigozhin, Russia’s defence ministry late on Friday issued a second statement seeking “to clarify” the situation and acknowledging the role of the Wagner group fighters in Soledar.
“As for the direct storming of Soledar’s city quarters occupied by the armed forces of Ukraine, this combat task was successfully accomplished by the courageous and selfless actions of volunteers from the Wagner assault detachments,” it said.
Burst riverbanks, thick mud and waterlogged fields could be seen for miles around north-west Ukraine’s border with Belarus on Thursday, making the prospect of a Russian assault from across the border unlikely for now, despite recent warnings from Kyiv.
On the sidelines of training exercises several kilometres south of the Russian border, soldiers from the unit based there told Reuters how the unusually mild winter had given them a considerable tactical advantage.
The unit’s spokesman, Serhiy Khominskyi, said that help in making the terrain unpassable had also come from an unlikely ally: the local beaver population.
“When they build their dams, normally people destroy them, but they didn’t this year because of the war, so now there is water everywhere,” he said.
A sign warning of mines in front of an anti-tank construction near the border with Belarus in the Volyn region. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters
Analyst Konrad Muzyka, who runs the defence consultancy Rochan Consulting, told Reuters that although a Russian troop buildup could be observed in Belarus, an attack into north-west Ukraine from Belarus would face enormous difficulties.
“It’s a horrible place to conduct an offensive operation. There are many watercourses there, very few roads,” he said.
“This makes it easy for Ukrainian forces to channel the movement of Russian forces into specific areas where they would be shelled by artillery.”
Germany will continue to “weigh every step carefully” and consult with its allies on further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
The German leader is facing mounting pressure to approve German-made battle tanks for Kyiv.
Germany has given Ukraine substantial military aid since Russia invaded, including howitzers, Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns and the first of four Iris-T surface-to-air missile systems.
Last week, it announced that it would send 40 Marder armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine and a Patriot air defence missile battery.
But critics have long complained of Scholz’s perceived hesitancy to take the next step on weapons deliveries.
On Friday, Scholz said Berlin would keep its “leading position” as one of Kyiv’s top supporters but he signalled he had no intention of being rushed on “such serious things that have to do with peace and war, with the security of our country and of Europe”.
Russia is becoming too dependent on oil revenues to support its budget as it ramps up military spending, economists have said, warning the government may have to raise taxes if prices of crude fail to meet expectations this year.
The price of Urals oil URL-E, which is Russia’s main export, has plunged more than 20% since early December, when western nations led by the G7 imposed a $60 price cap on Russian oil exports to restrict Moscow’s ability to finance what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Given that the 2023 federal budget is based on a projected Urals price of just over $70 a barrel, and prices are currently trading closer to $50, this could prove problematic, Reuters reports.
As the price cap, western sanctions and EU embargo make it harder for Russia to export oil, Moscow has relied on China and India – the world’s largest and third-largest importers, respectively – to fill the gap.
A funeral service for the Ukrainian volunteer soldier Denys Halushko, who was killed while fighting near Bakhmut, Donetsk region. Photograph: Ukrinform/REX/Shutterstock
A Ukrainian soldier near the border with Belarus in the north-west Volyn region. Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters
An elderly woman cooks in a basement where she lives in Siversk, a town in north-east Donetsk region. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images
The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont has reported on the long-running battle for Soledar, amid a week of disputed claims about Russia taking control of the small salt-mining town.
His piece features some shocking before-and-after photos of the area showing the vast devastation caused by the conflict.
While the situation on the battlefield remained difficult to verify on Friday, by the week’s end, geolocation of reports by Russian war correspondents from Soledar suggested Russian forces were in control of large parts of the town.
Ukrainian forces, however, appeared to remain within Soledar’s municipal boundaries still fighting in the north-west, around the town’s salt mine and railway junction.
Crucially, Ukraine still appears to control the road beyond the town, connecting neighbouring Bakhmut and Soledar with Sloviansk and Kostyantynivka, whose capture would further threaten Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut.
What is clear is that the battle for Soledar and Bakhmut has become emblematic of the current state of the war on Ukraine’s eastern front, and more widely symbolic of the state of Moscow’s offensive.
Ukraine is confident Britain will announce that it plans to send about 10 Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv shortly, a move it hopes will help Germany finally allow its Leopard 2 tanks to be re-exported to the embattled country.
A formal announcement is anticipated on Monday, but Ukrainian sources indicated they understood that Britain had already decided in favour, as pressure mounts on Berlin ahead of a meeting of western defence ministers next Friday.
Earlier this week, it emerged that Britain was considering supplying Ukraine with the tanks – following months of requests from Kyiv – with a final decision in the hands of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
A handful of Challenger 2 tanks, taken from the UK’s existing fleet of 227, would not in itself make much difference on the battlefield, but it would be the first time any western country has agreed to send its own heavy armour to Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier stationed in the eastern city of Bakhmut has told CNN that Ukrainian units are still at the edges of Soledar.
Taras Berezovets, a captain in the Ukrainian Special Forces First Brigade, said paratroopers from 77th and 46th brigades were still on the western outskirts of Soledar.
He said remaining in Soledar made no military sense, because it was “completely destroyed. There is no single building which survived Russian shelling.” He added that he expected a decision to withdraw in the coming days.
Now, he said, the units see their mission as holding on as long as possible and killing as many mercenary Wagner fighters as possible.
He said much of the fighting over the last two weeks had involved street fighting in Soledar between small units of four to eight fighters.
Berezovets said he believed withdrawing from Soledar would not affect the ability of Ukrainian forces to resupply Bakhmut, a few kilometres to the south-west. He said two major roads into Bakhmut remained in Ukrainian hands, and Ukrainian fighter jets had been attacking Russian positions near Bakhmut during Friday.
Reuters are also reporting that Ukraine has denied Russia has seized control of the town of Soledar and said Ukrainian units are still there.
“Our units are there, the town is not under Russian control,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, told Reuters by telephone.
