Ukraine’s war: Soledar “still standing”, Russia considers expansion, Sweden has “something to hide”
1. Soledar still standing, Ukrainian military claims
Ukraine said on Thursday its troops were holding out despite fierce fighting on a battlefield littered with bodies around a salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine, where Russian mercenaries have claimed Moscow’s first significant gain in six months.
The ultra-nationalist contract militia Wagner, run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin outside the main military chain of command, claims to have taken Soledar after intense fighting it said had left the town littered with Ukrainian dead. But Moscow has waited to officially declare victory.
“At the moment there are still some small pockets of resistance in Soledar,” Andrej Bayevsky, a Russian-installed local politician, said in an online broadcast.
Ukraine has acknowledged Russian advances, but Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said fighting was still fierce.
The Russians were “moving over their own corpses,” she said.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Military Command, told Ukrainian TV that there was constant shelling in Soledar. “The enemy is trying to take the initiative and attack. But they are failing to break through our defenses.”
A 24-year-old Ukrainian soldier, stationed outside the small town, said: “The situation is difficult but stable. We are holding back the enemy … we are fighting back.”
With fighting on Ukraine’s eastern front as grueling as ever, Kremlin watchers looked at Russia’s latest change of battlefield leadership a day after Valery Gerasimov, chief of the military’s general staff, was unexpectedly given direct command of the invasion.
The former commander for three months, Army General Sergei Surovikin, was effectively demoted to become one of Gerasimov’s three deputies.
Moscow explained the decision – at least the third sudden change of top commander in the 11-month conflict – as a response to the growing importance of the campaign.
Both Russian and Western commentators saw attempts to shift blame for setbacks in which Russia has lost around 40% of the territory it had seized since February.
2. Russia considers raising upper age limit from 27 to 30, says Moscow lawmaker
Russia could raise the upper age limit for citizens to be conscripted into the armed forces as soon as this spring, a senior lawmaker has said, as part of Moscow’s plans to increase the number of Russian troops by 30%.
President Vladimir Putin gave his support in December to the Defense Ministry’s proposal to raise the age range for compulsory military service to cover Russian citizens aged 21-30, rather than the current range of 18-27.
The chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, Andrey Kartapolov, said in an interview with the official parliamentary newspaper that Russia may raise the upper age limit for conscription to 30 for this year’s spring draft.
But only after a “transitional period” of one to three years would the lower limit be raised from 18 to 21, Kartapolov said.
Critics said the idea of a transition period was an overt attempt by Russian authorities to increase the number of Russians eligible for military service to plug massive labor shortages resulting from heavy losses in the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s armed forces are a mix of contract soldiers and conscripts. Shoigu has outlined plans to increase the total number of combat personnel to 1.5 million from 1.15 million.
Asked about the possible changes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that President Vladimir Putin “conceptually supported” raising the conscription age, but the exact details were up to the Defense Ministry to work out.
The role of conscripts in Ukraine came under intense focus soon after Russia’s invasion last February, with the Ministry of Defense admitting some had been sent to fight there despite statements by Putin that this would not happen.
In September, Russia announced its first mobilization since World War II, calling up more than 300,000 ex-soldiers — including ex-conscripts — in an emergency mission to support the war in Ukraine.
Western governments say Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers in nearly 11 months of fighting.
3. Russia’s new deputy military commander visits troops in Belarus
A delegation led by the commander of Russia’s ground forces, Oleg Salyukov, visited Belarus on Thursday to inspect the combat readiness of a joint force stationed there, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said.
The visit came a day after Salyukov was named one of the deputy commanders of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in the latest of a series of reshuffles.
Moscow and its close ally Minsk have bolstered their joint military group in Belarus and plan to hold joint air exercises there starting next Monday.
The drills are part of a pattern of activity that has prompted Ukraine to warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin may try to use Belarus to launch a new ground invasion of Ukraine from the north.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko allowed Putin to use his country as one of the launching pads to invade Ukraine last February, when Russian forces were repulsed in an attempt to take the capital, Kyiv.
Military analysts say Russia has also used Belarusian facilities to train newly mobilized soldiers drafted in last September to bolster its forces in Ukraine.
However, Belarus has not sent its own troops into Ukraine to support Russia’s war there.
4. Kyiv continues to reform the judiciary despite the long road to EU membership
A congress of Ukrainian judges on Thursday appointed the last of eight new members to a key judicial oversight body, a move experts and officials have said is crucial to Kiev’s push to reform its judiciary.
The European Union made cleaning up the courts one of its key recommendations when it offered Ukraine candidate status last June, four months after Russia’s invasion.
The election of the new members to the High Council of Justice (HCJ) means that the body can resume its work of overseeing the appointment, dismissal and discipline of judges.
“Looking forward to the reformed HCJ demonstrating the rule of law and integrity in practice,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Matti Maasikas wrote on Twitter.
Ukraine’s parliament had already passed all the legislation the EU sought before accession talks with Kyiv began, the assembly’s speaker said last month.
But implementing these laws and achieving membership is widely expected to be a long road.
Some watchdogs have also warned that powerful interests are poised to push back against reforms, particularly in the judiciary.
In a statement on Thursday, the DEJURE Foundation, a non-governmental organization that monitors judicial reforms, expressed concern about the quality of the eight new elections.
“(The judges) showed their unpreparedness for real agents of change in the justice system,” it said. “We will evaluate the new team by their decision, the new HCJ has a chance to dispel the doubts of the community”.
Anti-corruption authorities in Kyiv have also doubled down in recent months in their fight against graft.
5. Russia accuses Sweden of having “something to hide” in the Nord Stream interrogation
Russia on Thursday questioned whether Sweden had “something to hide” over explosions that damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, as it criticized Stockholm for not sharing information in ongoing investigations into the blasts.
Swedish and Danish authorities are investigating four holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea and have become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Sweden’s refusal to cooperate with Russian prosecutors was “puzzling” and said Moscow had a right to know the details of the investigation into the explosions, which happened last September.
Moscow suggested Stockholm establish a joint investigation into the explosions, which could lead to three of the four lines of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas projects being permanently taken out of service. But both Sweden and Denmark have rejected the idea of Russian participation.
At a briefing in Moscow on Thursday, Zakharova suggested there were reasons for that decision.
“Perhaps Russian investigators, conducting an objective investigation, may come to an uncomfortable conclusion … about who carried out this act of sabotage, terrorism. About who came up with it and who carried it out,” she told reporters.
Zakharova said that Sweden is “hiding” the facts of what it discovered in the investigation, suggesting that “the Swedish authorities have something to hide”.
Sweden and other European investigators say the attacks were carried out deliberately, but they have not said who they believe was responsible. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed the explosions on Western sabotage.
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to transport Russian gas to Germany, was completed in September 2021, but never went into operation after Berlin canceled certification just days before Moscow sent its troops to Ukraine in February.