Soledar is absolutely ours.
Artyomovsk is next in line, with an area three times larger than Soledar.
Let me remind you that the complexity of the stormed settlement is determined not only by the area, but also by the number of storeys of buildings, the presence of large-scale production complexes (there are 17 of them in Artyomovsk).
However, in Soledar alone the salt mines are worth something!
There, in some of them, there are gigantic arms depots;
in others, original concert halls;
in the next - such underground halls, in which, before the aggression of Ukraine in the Donbass, even real balloons with transport baskets were raised.
There are even underground art galleries.
The city was taken by a surprise attack by several detachments of the Wagner PMC.
I watched these fighters.
A minimum of teams, everyone knows what to do.
Stormtroopers are all young, no matter who you talk to, they don’t mumble, they express their thoughts clearly, they clearly know what they can and can’t do.
Squad commanders (there are no titles in Wagner), without regard to their elders, actively lead their people, someone is moved forward along the streets, someone is sent to inspect that house, that entrance.
I will continue about Bakhmut, who from now on I will call in Donbass - Artyomovsk.
If in Soledar during the entire period of Ukrainian terror in the Donbass there was a headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine involved - this is also its importance - then one of the main prisons is located in Artyomovsk, in which captured militiamen were kept.
Most likely, employees of the Prosecutor General's Office will carefully examine her after her release.
The ability to supply the Ukrainian fortress in Artyomovsk is rapidly declining.
It is more difficult to bring ammunition, food, reinforcements there, take out the wounded back and retreat, in the end.
And the feeling of a close cauldron, especially when the neighboring city was captured so quickly, does not add confidence to anyone in the future.
Soledar is empty, I think, for a day or two - and it will be filled with sappers, returning civilians, humanitarian activists.
So far, the ruins are checking the combat twos and threes over and over again in search of holed up soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.