January 12, 2023
Russia's assault on the salt-mining town of Soledar in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region continued overnight despite earlier Russian claims that the city had been captured.
Russian forces overnight used artillery, rockets, and aircraft to pummel the city, which is a northeastern suburb of the strategic city of Bakhmut, which could be vulnerable to capture if Soledar is taken.
Satellite imagery of Soledar released by Maxar Technologies on January 11 showed a city devastated by weeks of intense fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his daily video address that "the Donetsk line is holding" even though Soledar had been "almost completely destroyed by the invaders."
In a separate statement, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces also said fighting continues. The statement said in order to bring the entire Donetsk region under its control, the Russian military is attempting both to attack nearby Bakhmut and to disrupt supply routes to Soledar.
Earlier, the Kremlin-connected businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who heads the ostensibly private Russian mercenary group Vagner, said his forces had captured the city.
"I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar from units of the Ukrainian Army.... Ukrainian units that did not want to surrender were destroyed," he said in a statement on January 11.
RFE/RL could not independently verify any of the assertions.
Also during the night, the Russian military reportedly shelled the southern city of Zaporizhzhya, local Ukrainian officials reported.
WATCH: In the woods of eastern Ukraine, a team of volunteers are scraping the dirt from a corpse and searching for anything that might identify who it was.
The shelling, shortly after 3 a.m. local time, damaged some infrastructure but no casualties were reported, city council official Anatoliy Kurtev said.
Since October, Russia has been carrying out air strikes across Ukraine targeting the electrical grid and other civilian infrastructure and causing disruptions in electricity, water, and heat supplies.
Earlier on January 11, Moscow announced a reorganization of its military command, placing Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in charge of the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation." Gerasimov replaces General Sergei Surovikin, who was named Gerasimov's deputy. Surovikin was made overall commander of the war just three months ago.
In an assessment issued on January 11, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War claimed Russia is suffering from "munitions shortages" that "hinder the ability of Russian forces to sustain offensive operations."
"Russian sources are increasingly…acknowledging that Russia's ammunition and supply shortages are decisively impeding the ability of Russian forces to advance," the assessment stated.
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