The Ukrainian army admitted on Wednesday that it has withdrawn from Soledar, two weeks after Russian troops announced the capture of the town in eastern Ukraine.
“After months of hard fighting, Ukrainian forces left the city to retreat to prepared positions,” Ukrainian military spokesman for the eastern zone, Sergei Cherevaty, told the French news agency AFP.
Cherevaty did not specify when Ukrainian troops withdrew from Soledar had about 10,000 inhabitants before Russia invaded the countryon February 24 last year.
Russia claimed Soledar on January 13, but Ukrainian officials the same day said their forces continued to resist Russian forces, including the Russian group of Wagner mercenaries.
Soledar, a mining town, is located near Bakhmut, where fierce fighting has taken place between the two sides.
This is reported by the American television channel CNN The United States and European countries advised Ukraine to abandon Bakhmut and prioritize an offensive in the south, “with a different fighting style that takes advantage of the billions of dollars in new military equipment recently committed”.
Bakhmut and Soledar are part of the Donetsk region, one of four regions annexed by Russia at the end of September.
In addition to Donetsk, Moscow also annexed Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporijia at the same time, where the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is located.
Moscow had already integrated the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea into the territory of the Russian Federation in 2014.
Ukraine and the international community in general do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five annexed territories.
Source: DN
