MOSCOW, January 12. /TASS/. Changes to the Russian forces’ tactic on the battlefield made it possible to gain control of Soledar in the Donetsk People’s Republic, military expert Vitaly Kiselev said on Russia’s TV Channel One.

Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday that Soledar, where heavy fighting had been going on in recent days, was taken by the Wagner PMC fighters and that the remaining Ukrainian forces were trapped in the city center, where hostilities were continuing. Also on Wednesday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that Russian troops had blocked Soledar from the north and the south and hostilities were in progress inside the city.

"Changes to tactics and configuration on the battlefield gave us an opportunity to take this locality [Soledar] and drive the enemy out of there," said Kiselev, a patriotic education adviser to the rector of the Lugansk State University. He also noted that the Western media were focusing on the fact that the Russian army’s control of Soledar threatened the positions of the Ukrainian military in Artyomovsk (Ukrainian name Bakhmut) and Seversk.

An adviser to the acting head of the DPR, Yan Gagin, said on Wednesday that an estimated 500 Ukrainian soldiers remained in Soledar.