Russia is strengthening its forces in Ukraine, but Ukrainian forces are holding on in fierce battles for the city of Soledar in the east of the country, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Thursday, Reuters and AFP reported. A Ukrainian official claims that the Russians do not take into account the heavy losses suffered and continue to attack the mining town in the Donetsk region.

At the briefing, Malyar said that the number of Russian military units in Ukraine has increased to 280 from 250 last week, as Moscow seeks to gain “strategic initiative”.

“Fierce battles are taking place in the direction of Soledar,” said Malyar. “They (Russians) are moving over their own corpses.”

She noted that “despite the difficult situation, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting unceasingly.”

“Russia is pushing its people to a massacre of thousands, but we are resisting,” Maliar said.

The Russians are trying to break through the Ukrainian lines

Another high-ranking military brigadier general, Oleksiy Gromov, said at a briefing that the military situation in Ukraine remains “difficult”, and the fiercest battles are on the eastern front.

According to him, Russian troops are trying to break through Ukrainian lines and surround Ukrainian troops.

Gromov also said that the threat of an attack from Belarus, Russia’s ally in northern Ukraine, will continue this year.

Late Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said fighting was continuing in Soledar, a pre-war town of about 10,000 people that is now completely destroyed, and that the front in the region was “holding.”

Russia has been trying to seize this area of ​​Donetsk region since the summer, after several major and humiliating setbacks that prompted Vladimir Putin to announce the partial mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists and launch a campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Kyiv declared “big losses” of PVK “Wagner”

Without giving figures, Malyar told reporters on Thursday that Russian troops fighting in Soledar – mostly mercenaries from Wagner’s paramilitary group – were “suffering heavy losses” “trying unsuccessfully to break through our defenses”.

“Today, the outskirts of the city are littered with corpses of (Vladimir) Putin’s soldiers,” she told reporters.

Kyiv did not give a death toll in the fighting for Soledar and Bakhmut, the main town in the area, but Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, complained of “significant losses” in an interview with AFP. on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian military said Thursday morning that it had killed more than 100 Russian troops in an attack in Soledar after Ukrainian forces fired a missile at a group of Putin’s troops, the command of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said. Kyiv Independent.

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