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| AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka |
Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding, monthslong battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s wider war.
“Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby Donetsk province city of Soledar, known for salt mining and processing.
“The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes,” Zelenskyy said. “This is what madness looks like.”
Late Tuesday, the head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, Dmitry Prigozhin, claimed in audio reports posted on his Russian social media platform that his forces had seized control of Soledar, with battles continuing in a “cauldron” in the city’s center. Ukrainian officials did not comment on the claim, and The Associated Press was unable to verify it.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said earlier that Russian troops alongside soldiers from the Wagner Group had advanced in Soledar and “are likely in control of most of the settlement.”
The ministry said that taking Soledar, 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Bakhmut, was likely Moscow’s immediate military objective and part of a strategy to encircle Bakhmut. But it added that “Ukrainian forces maintain stable defensive lines in depth and control over supply routes” in the area. --->READ MORE HERE
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| REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne |
Russia ordered its top general on Wednesday to take charge of its faltering invasion of Ukraine in the biggest shake-up yet of its malfunctioning military command structure after months of battlefield setbacks.
It did so as Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia's private military firm Wagner, said his forces had captured all of the eastern Ukrainian mining town of Soledar and killed about 500 Ukrainian soldiers after heavy fighting.
"I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar from units of the Ukrainian army ... Ukrainian units that did not want to surrender were destroyed," he said in a statement.
"The whole city is littered with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers," said Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Minutes earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mocked previous Wagner claims to have seized part of Soledar, saying fighting was still going on.
"The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend that part of our town of Soledar ... is some sort of a Russian possession," he said in a video address. "But fighting continues. The Donetsk theatre of operations is holding."
There was no immediate Ukrainian comment on Wagner's latest assertions.
In a separate statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian military general staff said Russian forces were suffering heavy losses as they tried to take Soledar and sever Ukrainian supply lines. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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