Ukrainian missile strike ‘kills more than 100 Russian soldiers who had grouped together’

Ukraine claims to have killed more than 100 Russian troops in a coordinated strike during the brutal frontline battle to control the town of Soledar in yet another devastating setback for Vladimir Putin.

Kyiv’s military says scores of enemy soldiers ‘went together to Hell’ after they were targeted in a coordinated attack which included the launch of a Soviet-era missile and an assault by special forces.

It comes as Putin was accused of ‘driving his own people to slaughter by the thousands’ in his drive to secure the key settlement in eastern Ukraine.

Heavy fighting has completely devastated Soledar, once a bustling salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine, as Russian forces try to take control of the nearby key city of Bakhmut.

Before-and-after satellite images show how all of the town’s buildings have been destroyed, with barely any walls left standing, by a relentless stream of missiles and gunfire.

Footage released by Ukraine’s special forces reportedly shows a group of Russian soldiers being hit by Ukrainian artillery in the fields surrounding the town. 

The Russian soldiers were spotted in large groups in several areas across Soledar by the Ukrainian special forces, who then relayed those coordinates to the high command.

Ukrainian troops opened fire at the Russian soldiers, while the Tochka-U tactical missile was also launched in a series of deadly strikes.

More than 100 Russian soldiers were killed in the coordinated attack, while two machine gun positions and two mortars were also destroyed, the Ukrainian special forces said.

Soledar, in the industrial Donbas region, lies just nine miles from Bakhmut, where troops from both sides have been taking heavy losses in some of the most intense trench warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year.

‘The Russians are moving over their own corpses,’ Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister, Hanna Malyar, said today of the dire situation in Soledar. ‘Russia is driving its own people to the slaughter by the thousands, but we are holding on.’

Russia is trying to take control of Bakhmut as it has a network of cavernous mining tunnels below the ground which can hold troops or tanks.

Russian troops have stepped up their assault of Soledar, forcing Ukrainian troops to bear wave after wave of attacks led by the Wagner mercenaries. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last night fighting is still raging in the Soledar – dismissing claims that Putin’s Wagner group controlled the town. 

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Ukrainian state TV that 559 civilians remain in Soledar, including 15 children, and it was impossible to evacuate them due to ongoing fighting. The town had a pre-war population of around 10,500. 

The fate of Soledar remains uncertain after the Wagner group claimed it controlled the gateway town – but the Kremlin cautioned against declaring victory prematurely.

In his daily address Wednesday, Zelensky insisted the front was ‘holding’.

‘The terrorist state and its propagandists are trying to pretend’ to have achieved some successes in Soledar, Zelensky said, ‘but the fighting continues’.

Russia’s attack on Soledar has come at a high price for Putin’s men, with more than 100 soldiers killed in the latest Ukrainian assault.

The Ukrainian special forces said: ‘More than 100 Russian soldiers went together to Hell in the Soledar area. This happened thanks to the coordinated work of SSO soldiers, gunners, and rocket launchers.

‘The concentration of the enemy in several areas was discovered by the operators of the Special Operations Forces. Artillery was directed at the enemy, and the Tochka-U tactical missile complex was also used in one of the areas.

‘As a result of these several strikes, the destruction of more than 100 occupiers, 2 machine gun positions and 2 mortars were confirmed.

‘In the video – one of the stages of working out the artillery according to the given coordinates.’

Both Moscow and Kyiv have said the battle in Soledar has been long and brutal. If Soledar did fall to Moscow’s forces, it would be Russia’s first significant territorial gain in Ukraine for months. 

The head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed Wednesday that his forces had ‘taken control of the whole territory of Soledar’ and ‘urban battles’ were fought in the city centre.

But in a sign of differing accounts of the situation on the ground, Russia’s defence ministry urged caution, saying it was best to wait for ‘official announcements’.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said the situation in Soledar was ‘approaching that of critical’.

‘The Ukrainian armed forces are holding their positions. About one half of the town is under our control. Fierce fighting is going on near the town centre,’ he said on YouTube.

However, Zhdanov told Ukrainian television that if Russian forces seized Soledar or nearby Bakhmut it would be more a political victory than military.

‘There is more politics than war here,’ said Zhdanov.

‘The Russians, if they take one of these towns, will try to put the event on par with capturing Berlin and they will use it for propaganda purposes as much for the outside market as for domestic consumption,’ he said.

‘Inside Russia, it will give them the opportunity to lift the spirits of conscripts and society as a whole. To unite them all…’

Ukraine’s military command said Thursday that Russia was recruiting former soldiers and law enforcement officers to join paramilitary units in Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.