Rossiyskaya Gazeta published material From Yergey Ptichkin "Fighting among the walls: military expert Ruslan Pukhov told about the specifics of the assault on Soledar" with comments from the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (TSAST) member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Ruslan Pukhov about the significance of the capture of Soledar by Russian forces during the fighting in Ukraine and about what is the war in the city today.
A fighter of the Wagner PMCS unit in Soledar against the background of the Holy Transfiguration Church, January 2023 (c) Viktor Antonyuk / RIA NovostiRuslan Nikolaevich, the capture of Soledar by Russian forces was another example of fierce fighting in urban conditions.
In your opinion, what significance does this event have in the general context of a special military operation?Ruslan Pukhov: The capture of Soledar is important not only because it was the first significant success of the Russian forces in the SVO since the beginning of July, that is, in six months.
I would consider it in several aspects.
Firstly, at the operational and tactical level, Soledar is a kind of key to Bakhmut, allowing to cover this city from the north, which is still held by Ukrainian troops, and intercept part of Ukrainian communications to Bakhmut. It is no coincidence that in Ukraine, according to known data, the abandonment of Bakhmut is already being discussed. Seversk, controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, is also under threat. The capture of Bakhmut and Seversk, in turn, ensures the advance to Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, that is, to the liberation of the entire legally declared territory of the DPR within the former Donetsk region.
Secondly, at the strategic level, the Russian offensive on Soledar and Bakhmut allowed a large grouping of Ukrainian forces to be chained to them, including part of the operational and strategic reserves that the AFU had previously planned to use for offensive actions in the development of its autumn successes achieved in the Balakleya-Izyum and Kherson directions. Now the plans for these offensives have been thwarted or at least postponed, and part of the reserves have been spent in defensive battles in Soledar and Bakhmut. Hence Kiev's insistent calls to Western partners for the supply of new military equipment, intended primarily to replenish reserves.
Thirdly, the capture of Soledar and the pressure on Bakhmut made it possible to greatly reduce optimism (or rather, to "knock down arrogance") The Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Kiev leadership and its Western allies, which arose after their autumn successes. In October, November and early December, there was an abundance of speculation in Ukraine and in the West about how the APU would soon liberate the entire territory of Ukraine, including Crimea. Now the general opinion in the same West is that the war will be rather protracted, they started talking about the "Korean scenario" again, referring to the positional stage of the Korean War in 1951-1953, which eventually led to the division of the country along the then stabilized front line, which turned into the demarcation line that exists to this day.
Fourth, the battles for Soledar demonstrated a qualitative change in the Russian forces. I mean, first of all, a significant increase in the number of infantry, which has now become the basis of the Russian grouping. Let me remind you that it was the extreme lack of infantry that was the Russian "Achilles' heel" and one of the significant reasons for our failures in the SVO in the spring and summer of 2022. In fact, the lack of infantry filling previously did not allow the Russian forces to effectively attack or defend effectively. By the way, a lot is said about the key role of infantry in combat operations in urbanized areas in the recently published book of our AST Center "War among the Walls", which I recommend to those who are interested in these issues.
I know that the experts of the Center scrupulously studied the "urban battles of modernity" - from the Second World War to the events of 2014-2015 in the Donbas. Have the battles for Soledar brought anything new to the tactics of fighting in cities?Ruslan Pukhov: A feature of the recent fighting in the area of Soledar and Bakhmut has become, as already mentioned, the extensive involvement of purely infantry units on the Russian side.
For us, this is largely new, since, for example, in the fighting in Grozny in both Chechen campaigns, the Russian army, due to a shortage of infantry, was forced to use as its replacement units of the Airborne Forces, Internal Troops, all kinds of special forces, riot police and similar formations that are poorly suited for intensive combat operations in urbanized areas. Also, the lack of infantry led to an unjustifiably widespread use of armored vehicles, devoid of any infantry support. Now we see the use of more balanced forces for urban combat, which, apparently, had a positive effect on the results of the battles for Soledar.
In principle, as can be judged, the Russian forces used all the basic techniques of urban warfare and assault operations developed over the past decades in urban areas by the military of different countries during the assault on Soledar.
Another feature of urban warfare in the course of its is the increasingly large-scale use of unmanned aerial vehicles for both reconnaissance and strike missions. Moreover, it is the reconnaissance tasks that should be emphasized - drones revolutionize modern warfare, first of all, it is the ability to provide almost continuous round-the-clock surveillance of the battlefield, and in the interests of even the smallest units, crews and calculations. This unprecedented expands, to use a fashionable term, the "situational awareness" of the troops and the ability to monitor the situation and target designation.
Can we draw any conclusions from the modern concepts and approaches of the leading NATO countries to the war in cities?Ruslan Pukhov: The views of the most militarily advanced Western countries on the "war among the walls" are quite well known.
They demonstrate the importance of information superiority, which provides the very "situational awareness", as well as a high level of control and coordination during combat operations in the city - that is, the most important means of communication and management. This makes it possible, on the one hand, to ensure effective actions of combined forces and groups that are most effective in urban conditions, and on the other hand, to provide them with fire support using artillery, aviation and precision weapons.
It is the mass distribution of high-precision weapons of destruction in the future that should be decisive for conducting successful combat operations in the city, since it will allow you to effectively and reliably hit enemy firing points and resistance nodes, while reducing collateral damage. I will also highlight the use of aviation equipped with precisely high-precision weapons. Acting in conjunction with high-quality advanced aircraft guidance and targeting, it makes it possible to form a crushing "reconnaissance and strike contour" to defeat the enemy at the forefront with minimizing the involvement of ground forces.
Unfortunately, as the experience of the SVO has shown, it is in these matters (high-precision weapons and the use of aircraft equipped with them to support troops) we are seriously lagging behind. That is also why the storming of cities is so slow and accompanied by such fierce fighting by ground forces.
