Russian Mercenaries’ Human Wave Tactics Push Back Ukrainian Troops In Soledar

When the Ukrainian army began rotating fresh units into eastern Ukraine in mid-December, the 46th Air Mobile Brigade drew the short straw.

It rotated into the sector around Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, 30 miles north of Donetsk, the seat of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic.

Bakhmut, a town with a pre-war population of 72,000, is the unlucky object of Russian obsession. The Wagner Group, the shadowy mercenary company financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin—who earlier in life was Russian president Vladimir Putin’s favorite sausage vendor—last spring chose Bakhmut as its main target.

For months, Wagner has hurled battalion after battalion of under-trained troops—ex-convicts, mostly—at Ukrainian defenses in Bakhmut. “Their tactic is to send people to die,” Oleksandr Pohrebyskyy, a sergeant in the 46th Air Mobile Brigade, told Ukrainian Pravda.

The Ukrainians have killed thousands of Wagner fighters and stubbornly held on in Bakhmut. But in the settlement of Soledar, just north of Bakhmut, Wagner’s human-wave tactics apparently worked.

The 46th Air Mobile Brigade’s 2,000 troopers fought hard for Soledar. Videos that circulated online depict the brigade’s wheeled armored vehicles pouring heavy machine-gun fire into Russian positions. On Wednesday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky paid “special tribute” to the 46th Air Mobile Brigade’s soldiers “for their bravery and steadfastness in defending Soledar.”

The same day, the Ukrainian general staff expressed optimism that Soledar would hold. “The invaders are trying to take control of the city of Soledar and supply routes of Ukrainian units [and] suffer heavy losses,” the general staff reported. “The fighting continues.”

But the staff’s next daily update didn’t mention Soledar at all—an ominous sign. Soon photos were circulating online purporting to depict Wagner fighters in Soledar’s iconic salt mines.

It’s always possible Ukrainian forces could counterattack and liberate Soledar. “The situation can change in half a day,” Pohrebyskyy stressed.

In any event, the fall of Soledar doesn’t necessarily mean Bakhmut is in imminent danger of falling, too. “The capture of the center and most of Soledar by Wagner units is an undoubted tactical success,” wrote Igor Girkin, a former Russian army officer who played a key role in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. “However, the enemy’s front was not broken through.”

“The enemy is creating a new line of defense on the western outskirts, relying on salt mines,” Girkin added. “The battles for the city are not over yet—the western outskirts and suburbs will have to be stormed. The enemy command definitely controls the situation.”

Wagner has thrown an estimated 40,000 fighters at Bakhmut and Soledar. As many as 4,100 have died, according to The Guardian. Another 10,000 were wounded. No ground-combat force can sustain offensive operations after losing a third of its strength.

Whether and how quickly Wagner can recruit new fighters—likely from Russia’s prison population—could shape what happens next. No one expects Wagner to give up on Bakhmut. Indeed, the mercenary firm might read its capture of Soledar as evidence its human-wave tactics work and are worth the cost in blood—and it should push even harder.

“It still needs to be reached,” Girkin wrote of Bakhmut. The 46th Air Mobile Brigade surely is planning accordingly.