Satellite images show devastation to Russian-controlled mining town

Thousands of bomb craters have pierced fields in eastern Bakhmut and schools and agricultural warehouses have been reduced to charred remains in the hottest spot of fighting in the war in Ukraine, new satellite images show.

The fresh satellite images taken by Maxar between 3 and 10 January show fields and adjoining roads completely destroyed by bombs in eastern Ukraine’s Bakhmut. Aerial view of the region taken before the continuing Russian military offensive showed lush green farms.

Another image shows several civilian buildings such as schools and agricultural warehouses hollowed out by multiple Russian shelling attacks and reduced to their skeletons and surrounded by ashes.

Hundreds of homes and schools have been destroyed due to the months-long battles and artillery exchanges between invading Russian forces and counterattacks from Ukrainian soldiers.

Soledar is claimed to have been captured by the head of Russia’s proxy mercenary group Wagner on Wednesday, weeks after the region saw bitter fighting between both sides.

The mercenaries, which include recruited convicts from Russian prisons, have been engaged in fierce fighting in a likely effort to encircle Bakhmut, 10km (four miles) to the south.

"I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar," said Wagner’s head Yevgeny Prigozhin, who added that his forces have killed about 500 Ukrainian soldiers after heavy fighting.

"The whole city is littered with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers," he said.

The Volodymyr Zelensky administration has not confirmed Russia’s claims and mocked Wagner’s assertions.

The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said he cannot confirm that Soledar was in Russian hands.

Latest intelligence reports from experts monitoring the war state that the Russian claim of capturing the Donetsk oblast Soledar are likely false and that Wagner is still faced with concerted Ukrainian resistance.

Russian forces have largely struggled to make significant tactical gains in the Soledar region for months at a huge cost of human resources and artillery.

Control of Soledar will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut,” the US based think-tank the Institute for the Study of War said.

It added that even if the most generous Russian claims are taken at face value, the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut.

“Russian claims about Wagner Group and conventional Russian military formations’ operations in the Soledar area likely reflect competing claims over the responsibility for the most recent notable Russian tactical advances in Ukraine,” the ISW said on Wednesday.