This “news” was weeks in the making, but this time it is official: the city of Soledar has been liberated by the Wagner PMC (with Russian Airborne Forces blocking the city from the North and South). Why did it take so much time?
First, just as the regular armed forces, the Wagner PMC engages in economy of force tactics, meaning that they try to keep their own casualties to the absolute minimum while trying to degrade the enemy forces. In this case, the Ukronazis threw battalion after battalion into the Russian meat grinder with the hope of being able to maintain their control over Soledar. It is quite clear that the Wagner PMC and the Russian military were more than happy to keep that going on. Some sources claim that NATO lost 14 battalions in a desperate attempt to avoid a Russian liberation. So even if we take only half of this figure, that is still seven battalions lost on the NATO side (note that the 14 battalions is a Ukie, not Russian, claim!).
Most of that damage was done by artillery strikes, by the way which, in spite of a truly massive NATO effort to win the counter-battery engagements, outcomes have shown that Russian artillery is simply better, in spite of the formidable NATO C3ISR capabilities. So, coming back to our “semi-open cauldrons” (i.e. open on three sides, with the fourth under Russian fire control), they gave the Russians a great deal of flexibility, in spite of the numerical inferiority of the Russian forces, to massively degrade NATO forces. Bottom line: the fact that western sources do not report a single word about these cauldrons does not mean they never existed or suddenly vanished]
Third, Soledar, like Mariupol, had formidable defenses made even stronger by eight years of preparations. Besides over 200km of tunnels and mines, Soledar has a very large “promka” (industrial zone) which made advances very difficult and dangerous (a similar situation to what took place in Mariupol). The Wagner folks took all their sweet time going in slow and saving their forces. As always, you cannot spot the degradation of the NATO defenses until they suddenly crumble, which is what happened in the last 24 hours.
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