Live: Russia’s Wagner Group fighting ‘heavy, bloody battles’ in east Ukraine, founder says

11:06am: Wagner Group chief says Ukrainian forces fighting hard to defend Soledar

The Russian mercenary Wagner Group said on Tuesday it was fighting “heavy, bloody battles” for control of the town of Soledar as part of Russia’s months-long offensive to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“On the western outskirts of Soledar there are heavy bloody battles. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are honourably defending the territory of Soledar,” Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on social media.

The Kremlin-linked businessman, who has been hit with Western sanctions, also dismissed allegations that Ukrainian forces were deserting front lines en masse in Soledar.

“Let’s be honest with ourselves. The Ukrainian army is bravely fighting for Bakhmut and Soledar. Reports of their mass desertion are not true,” Prigozhin said, cited by his press office on Telegram.

Soledar is around 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the war-battered city of Bakhmut, which has become the focus of fighting in recent months.

The capture of Bakhmut – a city with a pre-war population of 70,000 – is now one of Moscow’s main military objectives almost a year into its Ukraine mission.

A Russian proxy official in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said on Tuesday on Russian state television that Soledar was “very close to liberation” by Moscow’s forces.

He admitted that this came “at a very high price” and said Ukrainian forces were “still resisting”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his late night address on Monday that his troops were withstanding “new and even tougher assaults” on Soledar.

He said the town had been flattened by the fighting. “Everything is completely destroyed,” he said.

11:02am: Russia appoints new chief of staff of ground forces 

Russia has appointed Colonel-General Alexander Lapin as chief of staff of the country’s ground forces, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, despite fierce criticism from leading hawks over his performance in Ukraine.

Lapin, previously commander of Russia’s central military district, was blasted last October by hawkish allies of President Vladimir Putin after Russian forces were driven out of the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, a key logistics hub.

His appointment follows other sweeping changes to Russia’s military leadership in the course of the 11-month war, in which Moscow’s forces have seized large areas of south and eastern Ukraine but suffered a series of painful defeats and retreats.

On October 8, Russia named Air Force General Sergei Surovikin as the overall commander of its forces in Ukraine, shortly after the reported sacking of the commanders of the Eastern and Western military districts.

In August, the state-owned RIA news agency reported that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet had been fired after a series of humiliations including the sinking of its flagship and the loss of eight warplanes in an attack on a Russian base in Crimea.

After Russia lost Lyman in October, Lapin drew savage public criticism from Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who have both sent units to Ukraine to bolster the efforts of the regular army.

10:54am: Russian warship held air defence exercise in Norwegian Sea, Moscow says

A Russian warship armed with hypersonic cruise weapons has held exercises in the Norwegian Sea, Moscow’s defence ministry said on Tuesday.

“The crew of the frigate ‘Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov’ conducted an air defence exercise in the Norwegian Sea,” the ministry said.

“The crew … conducted an exercise to repel the means of an air attack of a simulated enemy in the Norwegian Sea.”

Last week, President Vladimir Putin sent the frigate to the Atlantic Ocean armed with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles. Russia says the Zircon missiles fly at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles).

Moscow sees the weapons as a way to pierce increasingly sophisticated US missile defences.

10:49am: Russian forces probably control most of east Ukraine town Soledar, UK defence ministry says

Russian forces, including from the mercenary Wagner Group, are probably in control of most of the small town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine after tactical advances in the last four days, the British defence ministry said in a regular intelligence update on Tuesday.

Officials in Kyiv have said Moscow stepped up a powerful assault on Soledar in the industrial Donbas region, forcing Ukrainian troops to repel waves of attacks led by Wagner Group fighters around the salt mining town and nearby fronts.

Soledar is a few miles from the city of Bakhmut, where troops on both sides have suffered heavy losses in some of the most intense trench warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.

“Russia’s Soledar axis is highly likely an effort to envelop Bakhmut from the north, and to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication,” Britain added in its intelligence update.

10:30pm, January 9: Zelensky says defence of Soledar has helped Ukraine win time

President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised the resilience of Ukrainian forces fighting off waves of attacks in the eastern region of Donbas, saying they helped the country win time and gain strength.

“Thanks to the resilience of our soldiers in Soledar, we have won for Ukraine additional time and additional strength for Ukraine,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address, referring to a mining town in the eastern Donbas.

Ukrainian military reports say the country’s troops are withstanding heavy attacks by Russian forces redeployed in Soledar, near the city of Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to capture for months.

Zelensky did not spell out what he meant by gaining time and strength, but Ukrainian officials and senior officers have warned that Russia is planning a new major offensive in the coming months.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)