Day 321: January 10Today there is some bad news. While the Ukrainians inside Soledar continue to hold their defense, Ukrainian flanks around Soledar have gradually been compromised. Russian attacks to the north and south of Soledar started out wide and distant from the city, but over the last two days, they have been steadily closing in. Russian fire recently started to impede the Ukrainian rotation process, and it also allowed the Russians to open more lines of attack. Preserving control over the main defensive positions inside the city can rapidly become useless, and here is why. The Ukrainians were not able to withstand the tempo of Russian advances, and today the Spokesperson for the Eastern Group of Forces explained how it happened. He said that almost all Wagner units had been relocated to storm Soledar, which made it the most intense area on the entire front, much more intense than even Bakhmut. He said that the Wagners had switched to using the tactics from the first world war, where they just tried to overwhelm the enemies with the sheer number of infantry. Some people have been skeptical about it because it is a private military company that cannot expend their professional personnel in this way, but this is where the rules of the game have recently changed because the Head of the Wagner forces, Prigozhin, has recruited more than 40 thousand Russian prisoners. These prisoners are obviously not professional fighters, and they are treated to a large extent as expendable resources. The prisoners are used by the professional forces as cannon fodder to overwhelm the Ukrainians and also find weak spots. Today a Ukrainian reserve officer and analyst described in detail how the Wagners in Soledar actually work. They send several small squads of prisoners, up to 8 people, to storm multiple targets along the perimeter of the city. Once the first wave is dead, they adjust the targets and send the second one. Once any group achieves success and reaches the target, the Wagners know that the prisoners have found a weak spot and finally deploy their professional units to develop the attack further. This is exactly how the Russians managed to get a toehold in the northern part of the city, which they still maintain because they deployed professional forces. And this is exactly how they managed to enter the central part of the city. Unfortunately, today’s videos of fights suggest the Wagners managed to develop their success inside the town. Such a dangerous development of the situation put some Ukrainian units in the Artiomsol into a salient and forced them to retreat towards the salt mines. So, the fights are once again happening near the entrances to the salt mines. One of the reasons why the Russians were able to conduct the attacks along the perimeter of the city in the first place is that the Ukrainians seem to have failed to protect their flanks. The Russians managed to immobilize Ukrainian troops in Krasnopolivka, Sil Station, Krasna Hora, and Pidhorodne. As of now, the Ukrainians are still controlling the salt mines and high-rise buildings in Soledar, which are the main defense positions, and they also control everything west of the railways. If the Ukrainians manage to conduct a series of counterattacks and reduce Russian fire control over the region, then the Russians will lose the ability to send troops to Soledar from every direction, and the Wagners will not be able to sustain their attack. If not, then controlling defensive positions in Soledar becomes useless, as the Russians are cutting too deep into the Ukrainian flanks. Many sources say that the next 24 hours are decisive, so we will see what the Ukrainian command decides to do.