'Hellish' battle for Soledar symbolises state of war

An infantry carrier moves quickly across a devastated landscape, traversing a flat expanse dotted with lines of shattered buildings, some reduced to rubble by artillery fire.

- Peter Beaumont

Smoke rises from strikes on Soledar

The drone footage shows the carrier, marked with a red cross, halt beside a building missing part of its roof and many of its windows. A Ukrainian medic darts out and peers briefly around the corner of the building as a casualty is brought out on a stretcher. Loaded quickly, the carrier heads away at speed, coming under Russian artillery fire.

Pictured in the footage are the ruins of the small Donbas saltmining town of Soledar, and a fleeting scene from a battle where life, death and injury has been measured in the past week in such near and not-so-near misses.

Last Friday, as Russia's defence ministry said its forces had taken full control of the town, western analysts suggested that, if true, it would be at best a pyrrhic victory, gained at high cost to fighters from the Wagner mercenary group of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who claimed the town had fallen two days earlier.

Ukrainian officials denied the Russian claim, suggesting they were still holding on and counterattacking.

While the situation on the battlefield remained difficult to verify, by the week's end, geolocation of reports by Russian war correspondents from Soledar suggested Russian forces were in control of large parts of the town. Ukrainian forces, however, appeared to remain fighting within Soledar's municipal boundaries.