Uncertainty still hangs over Soledar, but Russia says it loud and clear this Friday: the municipality in eastern Ukraine belongs to it entirely this Friday, January 13. A statement that comes after several days of rumors about an imminent fall, until then cautiously dismissed by Moscow, which recognized that fighting continued there.
Therefore, the official claim of the Kremlin supposes a local victory for the Russian forces, contested by Kyiv. At the end of the afternoon, the American media CNN, for its part, evoked an “organized withdrawal” of the Ukrainians.
The pride of Moscow at the end of this murderous encirclement leaves doubts in any case. Why do the Russians care so much about the fall of this city in eastern Ukraine, which before the war had 12,000 inhabitants and whose ruins are home to only 500? BFMTV interlocutors and specialists provide some clues.
the battle of words
First you have to navigate through the contradictory statements of the day. The Russian Defense Ministry press release speaks of “a liberation completed on the night of January 12.”
Serguïï Tcherevaty, spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Ukrainian army, immediately denied in a televised address: “Heavy fighting is still taking place in Soledar.” “The Ukrainian Armed Forces are keeping the situation (in Soledar) under control in difficult conditions” in front of “the best units (of the Russian mercenary group) Wagner and other Russian special forces,” he added in this speech translated by Agence France Presse. (AFP).
A Ukrainian soldier interviewed in a report broadcast this Friday by BFMTV confirms: “The boys hold their positions in Soledar. The Russians want to surround us on the flanks but our men hold their lines of defense. Nobody retreats, it is our land.” “.
It is also in what shows the evolution of the confrontation between Russians and Ukrainians and the strategic lessons that it entails that the outcome of the battle for Soledar is of interest to General Jean-Paul Paloméros, former NATO Transformation Allied Commander and former Chief of Staff. of the Air Force.
“On the one hand, we have the Russians who do not count human losses, who put everything into the battle, on the other hand, the Ukrainians who are responsible for their human resources and who must hold the front and regain the initiative,” he said. he slipped this Friday on BFMTV.
Solder to forget 6 months of failure
For the rest, the word spread by the Kremlin says little about what it seeks through control of Soledar. His press release barely indicates that this victory is “important for the continuation of offensive operations.”
We also divine in this laconicism the satisfaction of stopping a long and infernal spiral for the Russian army. It is due to his first success since the one obtained in Lyssytchansk… on July 6th. Either six months spent on the defensive, or stuck behind a frozen front line. “It’s really about reviving a dynamic on the Russian side,” Patrick Sauce, our foreign policy editorialist, said on set.
bridgehead
The Russian press release offers a second lesson. If Soledar counts as “the persecution” of the crime, it is because it is not an end in itself. Indeed, seizing Soledar is above all opening the way to Bakhmout, the epicenter of his military maneuvers located almost 15 kilometers to the southwest, isolating it from the rest of Ukraine and keeping the city at bay.
“For the Russians, it is important to seize Soledar because it allows them to almost complete Bakhmout, encircle it. It is in their interest,” said Colonel Michel Goya, a BFMTV adviser on military matters. “It is the battle for the supply of this part of Donbass,” added journalist Patrick Sauce.
However, the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in the United States, offers a slightly different analysis. He felt that the possession of Soledar was “unlikely to herald an imminent encirclement of Bakhmout”. The agency bulletin continued: “It will not allow Russian forces to exercise control over Ukraine’s important land lines of communication with Bakhmout.”
The focus of the Russian sights on Bakhmout, a municipality of relatively modest dimensions, has also surprised observers for whom it is only a bridgehead to much larger cities: such as Kramatorsk or Slaviansk.
Salt as manna and shelter
It is therefore to be believed that capturing Soledar does not mean much. However, such a step should not be skipped. Because the place has some assets. Its famous salt flats in the first place. Every year, according to information compiled by BFMTV, 6.8 million tons of precious sodium chloride are extracted from the Soledar (literally “Don de sel” in Ukrainian) galleries. A harvest that first of all represents a financial windfall.
The mines still serve two secondary objectives for the Russians, according to our correspondent in Kramatorsk: they provide shelter for soldiers and ammunition depots.
A victory for Russia or the Wagner group?
These advantages seem almost derisory compared to the reading that the Russian State wants to give to the capture of Soledar. Indeed, this Friday it is the Ministry of Defense -and therefore the regular army- that proclaims its triumph. Two days ago, it was the private militias of the Wagner group and its leader Evguény Prigojine who swore to be the sole owners and possessors of the city.
From there to see in him a way to overcome the pawn of the overly restless Prigojine, whose political ambitions are less and less hidden in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and whose hostility towards the General Staff of his country is growing…
The main stakeholder was not mistaken, although the army ended up saluting the “courage” of Wagner’s fighters. In the BFMTV studios, Patrick Sauce commented:
“Evgeny Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel: ‘They are trying to steal Wagner’s victory.’ He has problems with infighting, corruption, bureaucracy, officials trying to stay.”
Wagner’s men are also deployed around Bakhmout, along with the recruits. Their internal feud could well escalate. Until the rot of the Russian troops?
Source: BFM TV
