Ukraine Military Denies Russian Soldiers Have Taken Soledar

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s military denied that Russian forces had taken over the eastern town of Soledar. They also said that the battles in the area were as bad as those in World War II.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the eastern military command, told Ukrainian TV that Ukrainian forces had not let Russian forces break through front lines.

“The Russian Federation does not have power over the town. There are hard fights going on right now, “he said. “There are a lot of problems there.”

He said that the military command was now “working on how to stabilise the situation in a way that hurts the enemy the most and hurts Ukraine the least.”

Wagner, a group of Russian mercenaries, says it now controls Soledar, a salt-mining town near the city of Bakhmut where there has also been a lot of fighting as Russia tries to take over the whole Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Cherevatyi said, “The battles near Bakhmut are as bad as those in World War II.”

Reuters was not able to find out for itself what was going on in Soledar.

Cherevatyi said that the Russian military still had a lot of weapons from the Soviet era and was using Soviet-era armoured vehicles that had been updated in some ways.

“Our allies are giving us more modern weapons,” he said, adding that weapons from the West were more accurate and gave Ukraine an edge.