Moscow has claimed to have taken control of the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, as Kyiv says its troops are still holding out there | Read more:
Both sides have conceded heavy losses in the battle for the salt mining outpost, with Moscow desperate to sell any win back home after repeated humiliations and Ukraine determined to hold - and win back - ground.
"Ukraine's armed forces have the situation under control in difficult conditions," Sergiy Cherevaty, a military spokesman said on Ukrainian television.Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said earlier that Russia had moved most of its forces around Donetsk to capture Soledar, conceding"This is a difficult phase of the war".
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage PreferencesObservers are divided over the strategic significance of Soledar, an industrial town with a pre-war population of around 10,000 people.
"But this small-scale victory is unlikely to presage an imminent encirclement of Bakhmut," it cautioned. The battle for Soledar comes after a major reshuffle in Moscow, with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov now in charge of its operations in Ukraine.A Moscow-based analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the move to AFP as"unprecedented" and said it indicated"very serious problems" on the battlefield.
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