PMC Wagner founder says about 500 Ukrainian soldiers killed as Soledar cleansed

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of private military company Wagner, announced that Soledar had been cleansed in the suburbs of Artemovsk/Bakhmut (the Russian and Ukrainian sides call the city differently) in the Donetsk region:

"Once again I want to confirm the complete liberation and cleansing of the territory of Soledar from units of the Ukrainian army. Civilians were evacuated, the Ukrainian units that did not want to surrender were destroyed — about 500 people. The whole city is littered with the bodies of the Ukrainian military. We are proceeding to cleansing up the mines," Prigozhin said.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Zelensky stated in the evening of January 11 that the fighting for the city continued.