The Russian defence ministry said on Friday that its troops had captured the eastern salt-mining town of Soledar, a claim quickly rejected by Ukraine’s military, which said that its soldiers were hanging on.

After a string of setbacks for Russia, capturing Soledar would represent the biggest success for Moscow’s forces in Ukraine in months, though military analysts have cautioned that the small town is of limited strategic value.

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement on Friday that its troops had “completed” their capture of the town overnight. But Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops fighting in the east, denied that Soledar had been captured. “This is not true,” Cherevaty said in remarks to Ukrainian news outlets on Friday afternoon.

“The fighting is ongoing.” Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said that Kyiv’s troops were still “bravely trying to hold the defence” of the town under a “high intensity” Russian offensive. Over the last several days there have been conflicting reports about who controls Soledar, while losses mount on both sides.

This week, the head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting in Ukraine claimed that his fighters had seized control of the town. Ukraine denied the reports, and the Kremlin walked back the assertion at the time. Weeks of intense fighting have devastated Soledar, which has taken on outsize attention despite its small size and limited strategic value, as Russia sought a win after months of setbacks.

The town lies near Bakhmut, the focal point of the Kremlin’s quest to take control of the entire Donbas region. The battle for Soledar, where hundreds of civilians are trapped in a town that has largely been reduced to rubble, has put into sharp relief Moscow’s costly and grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine. Taking Soledar would give Moscow’s forces new locations to place artillery and put pressure on Ukrainian supply lines that run towards Bakhmut.

The Russian claim came after the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an analysis on Thursday that geolocated footage indicated that Moscow’s forces “likely control most if not all of Soledar”.

New York Times News Service