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Fighting was ongoing Thursday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Soledar, officials said. Satellite Image courtesy of Maxar Technologies/EPA-EFE
Jan. 12 (UPI) — Ukrainian and pro-Kremlin officials said that fighting in the eastern city of Soledar was still underway Thursday.
“Our guys continue to push the enemy in these places. In general, the operation has been going well, and already the western outskirts of Soledar are completely under our control,” Russian-installed politician Andrei Bayevsky, according to Russian state-run news agency TASS.
The deputy defense minister of Ukraine, Hanna Maliar, said Ukrainian forces are still holding out in Soledar, during a press conference on Thursday.
“Fighting is fierce in the Soledar direction. They are moving over their own corpses,” Maliar said.
The general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine claimed that “over a hundred Russian occupiers were eliminated” in the Soledar area.
“This happened thanks to the coordinated work of soldiers of the Special Operations Forces, gunners and rocket launchers,” it said in a tweet Thursday.
A meeting in Turkey between Russian human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, and Ukrainian human rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, failed to produce the prisoner exchange that Ukraine had been hoping for. Moskalkova later said that lists of prisoners were shared in hopes of a future exchange.
“No actions related to the reciprocal release of individuals who sustained wounds or to prisoner swaps are possible without official decisions by special state government bodies, the Defense Ministry and, of course, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief,” Moskalkova told reporters.
“A meeting was held with Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova within the framework of previously reached agreements. We discussed a wide range of humanitarian problems with cases related to the provision of human rights assistance to citizens of the two counties. We also exchanged specific proposals,” Lubinets wrote on Facebook.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confronted Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Denis Manturov during a televised meeting over the lack of Russian aircraft sales.
Putin asked Manturov when plans for 700 aircraft including planes, helicopters and boats would be sorted, noting that orders had not been placed.
“What are you fooling around for? When will the contracts be signed?” Putin said.
