Russia’s recent capture of the city of Soledar, home to the largest salt mine in Europe and situated to the North of Bakhmut, a highly contested battlefield for control of its territory, is causing concern with the United States and its NATO allies, whose calculation for Russia’s advances during the winter failed to predict the city’s capture and the danger it poses to Bakhmut.
The fight over territory in Donetsk has barely moved an inch for months. Now the situation on the battlefields of Donetsk have changed dramatically. Yesterday Russia achieved its first territorial gain since July.
The fighting has thus far resulted in significant losses, especially for Ukraine. Ukraine’s military announced that one of its most famous troops, Dmytro Linartovych, became one of the casualties of the battles in Donetsk.
Captured by Russia’s private military company, the Wagner Group, the vast most majority of whose soldiers are convicts recruited into the group’s ranks in exchange for freedom after six months of dedicated fighting, captured Soledar on January 11th, 2023. Bakhmut, whose Northern entrance into the city is now exposed as a result of the capture, is now in danger and subject to a siege.
The Wagner Group, which up until the fall of Soledar had not achieved a major battlefield victory, is being credited in Russia’s state controlled media as having provided the primary impetus for the city’s siege and support of Russian armed forces in their breakthrough on Soledar.
In a Telegram channel, Russia’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged the role Prigozhin’s Wagner Group in the victory over Soledar. In their announcement, Russia’s Ministry of Defense (henceforth RMoD) stated:
“As for the direct assault on the streets of Soledar occupied by Ukrainian Armed Forces, the courageous and selfless actions of the volunteers of the Wagner assault squads successfully completed the combat mission,” the ministry said. [1]
As the District Assembly previously noted, the Wagner Group’s successful seizure of Soledar bolsters Evgeny Prigozhin’s profile within the circles of Russia’s ruling elite and provides a legitimate basis to expand the Wagner Group’s participation in the Ukraine war. As the war continues, Russia’s internal stability continues to weaken and events such as these portend the expanse of major fractures within the circles of its ruling elite.
RMoD continued, stating “Russian soldiers completed a set of combat missions” in its seizure of Soledar. The RMoD described these as “blocking the city from the north and south,” “isolating areas of combat activity,” “preventing the enemy from resupplying its lines with reserves from neighboring areas,” “stopping the Ukrainian armed forces from retreating,” and “fire support for the offensive from infantry, artillery or aircraft.”
Furthermore, the RMoD noted that the city maintains significance for its location at the centre of Artemovsk’s and Seversk’s lines of defense and for the continuation of a successful attack on Donetsk.
The fall of Soledar amounts to a major failure on the part of Ukrainians to perpetuate it’s prior momentum from the successful rout, offenses and breakthroughs achieved in the North, especially on Kharkiv, during its September counteroffensives.
Without admitting the foiled September counteroffensives, all of which have now come to an end (not only in Kherson but in Donetsk), the Institute for the Study of War (henceforth IfSoW), a Washington think tank, immediately launched a campaign, if not irrationally, then entirely without a reason grounded in the actual facts, to deny the “total” capture of the city.
In an update on the Ukraine war published on January 11th, the IfSoW stated: Russian forces hadn’t yet “fully” captured Soledar and arguendo claimed that taking the town “completely” is unlikely to enable its forces to take Bakhmut.
It added: “Russian claims about Russian advances in Soledar continue to generate discussion amongst Russian sources about the likelihood of Russian forces capturing Bakhmut.”
“The Russian discussion about the imminent capture of Bakhmut and the collapse of Ukrainian defensive lines are divorced from the current operational reality in the Bakhmut area, where Russian forces remain far from severing Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) needed to encircle Bakhmut.
“Russian offensive operations to capture Bakhmut have likely culminated due to degraded operational capabilities.” [2]
On the contrary, however, the seizure of Soledar not only directly threatens but actually disrupts Ukraine’s GLOCs in the Bakhmut area as the Bakmutka, for instance, no longer provides a defensive bulwark against Russian advances from the South of Soledar. The Russian seizure of Soledar provides an alternative route around the Bakmutka, rendering the Bakmutka a defunct and ineffective land barrier and defensive bulwark now.
Furthermore, if Bakhmut is seized, the Russians would then be in a position to utilize Bakhmutka, the river flowing through the city, in the South and Soledar in the North as a secured flank in a renewed onslaught on Kiev. This is an extremely serious development and lays the basis for the expansion of the Ukraine war into a much wider conflict.
With the Eastern bank of the Dnipro fully secured, the opening of a corridor through Bakhmut for the outward projection of power would threaten Kiev from the South.
The District Assembly has consistently argued that the collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces entails the entrance of a NATO ally or the United States directly into the conflict and therefore the expansion of the Ukrainian war into a world war.
Accordingly, the fall of Soledar is exacerbating fears over the eventual siege of Bakhmut and the ensuing and renewed onslaught on Kiev. In response to these fears and in a continuation of its policy of escalation, the United States is expediting the delivery of the Patriot missile system to Ukraine.
The delivery of the system and the subsequent offshore training in Oklahoma for it’s Ukrainian handlers is indicative of the general trend of the war, especially in light of the fall of Soledar. The general trend of the war leading up to the decision to expedite the delivery of an order for the Patriot missile system to Ukraine is turning.
Rather than preparing Ukrainians for offensive operations, the U.S. must now prepare the Ukrainians primarily for defense. The fact that the shift occurs after the breakthroughs in Kharkiv reflects on how short-lived Ukraine’s forward operability became.
NATO allies and the United States are acutely aware of this problem and have staged a new provocation with announcements to ship European and American tanks to Kiev. The tanks, which these countries have pledged to provided, are far more problematic than Russian tanks. The British Challengers require special fuel and specialized maintenance and are in extremely low supply in comparison to Russia’s strategic tank reserves. The German Leopard 2 tanks suffer from similar pitfalls.
American Abraham M1 tanks require “constant upkeep” together with “special fuel” which would not be in wide supply. The requirement to train a specialized team for maintenance would have to be situated close to the lines where the tanks would be deployed (a situation far less than ideal for a decisive battlefield advantage). The ammunition the tanks uses is not the same as either the challengers or Leopard tanks. These problems create seemingly insurmountable logistic challenges for the tanks to make an immediate impact on the battlefield within the next few months.
Although undoubtedly provocations, the shortcomings of these provocations demonstrate how ineffective major weaponry on the battlefield has been and further underscores how the fact that surrounding, seizing, and eliminating military units in combat operations is the only way to make decisive military gains on the battlefield. Anything less is merely provocation.
The attack on January 1st is an example of provocation and just how ineffective major weaponry truly is. Although the attack devastated the Russian military high command from the perspective of propaganda, the attack did not stop, deter, or affect, any major defensive strongholds or offensive actions, especially in Kherson or Bakhmut, both of which continue to be major battlefields in the war. No less than 10 days after the January 1st attack, Soledar fell.
[1] – [“Что касается непосредственного штурма городских кварталов Соледара, оккупированных ВСУ, — данная боевая задача была успешно решена мужественными и самоотверженными действиями добровольцев штурмовых отрядов ЧВК “Вагнер”, — сказали в ведомстве.”; ria.ru, January 13th, 2023]
[2] – [“RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 11, 2023” ; understandingwar.org, January 11th, 2022]