The Ukrainian army is defending Soledar despite “a difficult situation” there, Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar said on Thursday, as “fierce” fighting rages with Russian forces in and around this small town in the Ukraine. eastern Ukraine.
“The fiercest and most violent fighting continues today in the Soledar area,” she told a press conference.
According to her, “despite a difficult situation, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting tirelessly”.
On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the fighting continued in Soledar, a small town of around 10,000 pre-war inhabitants today completely destroyed, and that the front in the region “held”.
“Russia is sending thousands of its citizens to the slaughterhouse, but we are holding on,” Ganna Maliar hammered Thursday, hailing “the resilience and heroism” of the Ukrainian forces engaged in this violent battle which has lasted for several months.
Russia has indeed been trying since the summer to conquer this area of the Donetsk region, after several major humiliating setbacks which notably prompted Vladimir Putin to declare a partial mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists and launch a campaign of strikes on infrastructure. Ukrainian energy.
Without giving figures, Ms. Maliar told the press on Thursday that the Russian troops fighting in Soledar, especially mercenaries from the paramilitary group Wagner, “suffered heavy losses”, “trying without success to break through our defense”.
“The outskirts of the city today are strewn with the bodies of (Vladimir) Putin’s slain soldiers,” she told reporters.
Kyiv for its part did not quantify its men killed and wounded in the battle of Soledar and Bakhmout, the big city of the area, but Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, had deplored Wednesday “significant losses” in a interview with AFP.