Fierce fighting in Ukraine's Soledar leaves battlefield strewn with corpses - Zelenskiy

Russia has stepped up a powerful assault on Soledar in eastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, forcing Ukrainian troops to repel waves of attacks led by the Wagner contract militia around the salt mining town and nearby fronts, Qazet.az reports.

Soledar, in the industrial Donbas region, lies a few 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 nearly 11 months ago.

Ukrainian forces repelled an earlier attempt to take the town but a large number of Wagner Group units quickly returned, deploying new tactics and more soldiers under heavy artillery cover, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said on Monday on the Telegram messaging app.

"The enemy literally step over the corpses of their own soldiers, using massed artillery, MLRS systems and mortars," Malyar said.