Russia intensifies attack on Ukraine positions in east

Its mercenaries claim they have seized key city

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding, monthslong battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s wider war.

“Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Monday of the scene around Bakhmut and the Donetsk province city of Soledar, known for salt mining and processing.

“The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes,” he said. “This is what madness looks like.”

Late Tuesday, the head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, Dmitry Prigozhin, claimed in audio reports posted on his Russian social media platform that his forces had seized control of Soledar, with battles continuing in a “cauldron” in the city’s center. Ukrainian officials did not comment on the claim, and the Associated Press was unable to verify it.

The UK Defense Ministry said earlier that Russian troops alongside soldiers from the Wagner Group had advanced in Soledar and “are likely in control of most of the settlement.”

The ministry said that taking Soledar, 6 miles north of Bakhmut, was likely Moscow’s immediate military objective and part of a strategy to encircle Bakhmut. But it added that “Ukrainian forces maintain stable defensive lines in depth and control over supply routes” in the area.

A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Wagner Group “has moved from being a niche sideshow of Russia’s war to a major component of the conflict,” adding that its forces now make up as much as a quarter of Russian combatants.

The Kremlin, whose invasion of its neighbor 10 1/2 months ago has suffered numerous reversals, is hungry for victories. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other Ukrainian provinces in September, but its troops have struggled to advance.

After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson in November, the battle heated up around Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said Russia has thrown “a large number of storm groups” into the fight for the city. “The enemy is advancing literally on the bodies of their own soldiers and is massively using artillery, rocket launchers, and mortars, hitting their own troops,” she said.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Donetsk region's Kyiv-appointed governor, on Tuesday described the Russian attacks on Soledar and Bakhmut as relentless.