Russia-Ukraine war live: ‘small pockets of resistance’ from Ukraine in Soledar, says Moscow-installed official

A senior US envoy expressed strong concern Thursday about the activities of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group and its alleged attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and elsewhere in the world.

US state department Counselor Derek Chollet also urged Serbia to introduce sanctions against its traditional Slavic ally Russia.

“We believe that countries should sign on to the sanctions, and the reason why we believe that is because Russia’s actions do not only have to be condemned, they have to be punished,” he said.

“Russia every day is prosecuting a brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine. We need to stand together, to ensure that this behavior, it’s clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”

The US envoy this week launched a tour of several Balkan nations in a visit focused on international efforts to help normalise relations between Kosovo and Serbia after weeks of heightened tension. The former Serbian province declared independence in 2008, something Serbia and Russia don’t recognise.

A Russia-installed official in Donetsk, Andrey Baevsky, said there were still “small pockets of resistance” from Ukraine inside the city, claiming Russian-backed troops had nearly full control.

Baekvsky, who is a Lieutenant Colonel and the deputy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s parliament, told the Russian state-owned media agency “At the moment, indeed, there are still separate small pockets of resistance in Soledar, [but] our guys continue to crush the enemy in these places.”

“In general, the operation [has] developed successfully and the western outskirts of Soledar are already completely under our control,” he added.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.

A Russia-installed official in Donetsk, Andrey Baevsky, said there were still “small pockets of resistance” from Ukraine inside the city, claiming Russian-backed troops had nearly full control.

Baekvsky, who is a Lieutenant Colonel and the deputy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s parliament, told the Russian state-owned media agency “At the moment, indeed, there are still separate small pockets of resistance in Soledar, [but] our guys continue to crush the enemy in these places.” He said western Soledar was under full Russian control.

Ukrainian forces are “holding on” as “fierce fighting” continues in the town, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said on Thursday.

We’ll have more on this shortly. In the meantime here are the other key recent developments:

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut and Soledar in the east would be armed with everything they need to keep Russian troops at bay in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Kyiv said earlier its troops were fighting to retain control of the now-battered industrial towns in the east, which Russian mercenaries claimed earlier this week to have taken.

• Hundreds of civilians remain trapped in Soledar, Ukraine has said, as bloody fighting continues over control of the largely destroyed salt mining town. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, told Ukrainian state TV that 559 civilians remained in Soledar, including 15 children, and could not be evacuated.

• Satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies show the destruction inflicted upon Soledar. The Guardian has a series of striking images from inside the eastern Ukrainian town.

• President Vladimir Putin’s move to replace his top commander in Ukraine after a few months is a sign of military disarray and his growing impatience in a war Russia is not winning, analysts said. The defence ministry in Moscow said Wednesday it had, again, replaced its top commander in Ukraine, putting army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov in charge. It is the latest of several major shake-ups of Moscow’s military leadership.

• More than a dozen senior EU officials will meet members of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv on 2 February, a day before the EU-Ukraine summit, a European Commission spokeswoman said Thursday.

• A spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force command has warned of the possibility of missile attacks from Belarus. In a televised statement today, Yurii Ihnat said it was from Belarusian territory that most of the ballistic missiles were launched at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During a visit to Lviv on Wednesday, Zelenskiy called for his forces to be “ready both at the border and in the regions” near Belarus amid fears Russia may launch a fresh assault from the north.

• The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has claimed his forces have found the body of one of two British voluntary aid workers reported missing in eastern Ukraine. In a statement published on his Telegram channel late on Wednesday, Prigozhin did not mention the name of the dead man but said documents belonging to both Britons had been found on his body.

• A former Russian deputy minister of defence has suggested the country could increase the upper age limit for conscription from 27 to 30 for this year’s spring draft campaign. Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma defence committee, suggested the change could take place without altering the lower bar for conscription of 18 years.

• The commander of Russia’s ground forces, Oleg Salyukov, visited Belarus on Thursday to inspect the combat readiness of a joint force stationed there, the Belarusian defence ministry said. Salyukov was yesterday named as one of the deputy commanders of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in the latest of a series of reshuffles. His visit came as Russia and Belarus have expanded their joint military training exercises in Belarus.

• A US navy veteran has been released after almost a year in Russian detention, according to his family. Taylor Dudley, 35, of Michigan, was taken into custody by Russian border police last April after crossing the border from Poland into Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

• A Ukrainian soldier has had successful surgery to remove an unexploded grenade from his chest, senior officials in Kyiv have said. Surgeons removed the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman, while two sappers ensured the operation was conducted safely, said Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence.