Soledar is not far from the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut, which has been seeing heavy fighting as Russia attempts to seize it.
on Ukraine Tuesday that Russian forces and troops with the mercenary Wagner Group had made tactical advances into Soledar over the past few days and are now"likely in control of most of the settlement."
If Russia soon claims all of Soledar, the benefits of doing so are"limited," William Reno, a professor and chair of the political science department at Northwestern University, toldA crater left by shelling in Soledar, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, is seen on July 24, 2022. In the inset, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the Informal Summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States on December 26, 2022, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The importance of the battles for both Bakhmut and Soledar is political, Reno added. For Russia, seizing them would further Putin's goal of occupying all of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, while Ukraine also has a"political stake" in Bakhmut comparable to its long efforts to"Occupying these towns would play to Putin's stated aim of occupying all of Donbas," Reno said.
"I always say water finds its course. So if you can't succeed by going through the front door, you go through the back door, in this case Soledar," Soller said. He added that since Russia has had trouble frontally attacking Bakhmut, what Russia appears to be doing in its Soledar effort is cutting off Bakhmut's lines of communication.
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