Russia Yet To Decide How To Sell Soledar Success-ISW

Russia is struggling to present its claimed success in the salt-mining town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine as a victory, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Defense Ministry said on Friday that the small town, located 9 miles north of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region, was under Russian control. Ukraine has maintained however that its forces are holding out in the region.

In its latest assessment of the war in Ukraine, the ISW, a U.S.-based think tank, said Russia's "information space" was having difficulty portraying tactical Russian gains around Soledar as "operationally significant."

Russian sources previously suggested that Soledar's capture presaged an "imminent encirclement of Bakhmut" or even a "Ukrainian retreat" as far back as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the ISW noted.

"Some Russian sources claimed on January 17 that the capture of Soledar allows Russian forces to cut Ukrainian supply routes between Siversk and Bakhmut (T0513 highway), creating a Russian bridgehead for offensives on Siversk," the think tank said.

And another Russian source previously said that Soledar's capture will allow Russian forces to take the nearby village of Paraskoviivka and cut a section of the road from Sloviansk to Bakhmut.

The ISW said the fact that the Russian sources had not identified the key ground line of communication that Russian forces are now better positioned to take, or any other operational advantage associated with Russian tactical advances in Soledar "further underscores that the offensive to capture the settlement has not significantly changed Russian operations in the wider Bakhmut area."

A day earlier, the think tank assessed that Russian forces were advancing towards the embattled city of Bakhmut after capturing Soledar, intensifying attacks near Klishchiivka, located southwest of the city, as part of a "new effort to encircle Bakhmut, after months of ineffective frontal assaults."

The British Defense Ministry said in its latest intelligence update on the war that Ukrainian forces had likely withdrawn from Soledar by the end of Monday, and that Ukrainian forces "almost certainly continue to defend against Russian forces" on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

"Russia's advance on Soledar primarily consisted of Wagner forces and was a supporting operation aimed to enable the eventual envelopment of the larger settlement of Bakhmut," the Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

It added: "One of Ukraine's two main supply routes into Bakhmut is now under increasing pressure."

According to the ISW, Putin and the paramilitary unit, the Wagner Group, founded by his ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, have clashed over the capture of Soledar. During a live television address, the Russian leader failed to mention Wagner's role in the fighting. Instead, he attributed success in Soledar to the Defense Ministry.

Newsweek has reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment.

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