Control over territory and control of narrative: Both battles were under way with ferocity in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, as Russia claimed to have captured the salt-mining town of Soledar and Ukraine’s armed forces just as swiftly batted down the boast. Amid combat of an intensity not seen on the European continent in months, if not years, it will remain to be seen which assessment is correct and what impact that will have as the Russian invasion of Ukraine lurches toward the one-year mark. 

Russia is already portraying the capture of Soledar, in the Donetsk portion of the broader eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, as a fait accompli. The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda called the battle for Soledar “the biggest defeat of Ukraine’s armed forces since Mariupol,” while at the same time admitting that Soledar “is a small town on the outskirts of the most powerful Ukrainian defense hub — Artemivsk.” Artemivsk is the adjacent Luhansk region. 

Western headlines mirrored the Russian claim, with the Financial Times reporting that “Russian forces may have scored rare success in battle near Bakhmut” and the Telegraph saying Russia “is on brink of first battlefield breakthrough in months with capture of Soledar.” Not so fast, though. 

The guns are still blazing, the casualties are mounting — on both sides — and this stubborn patch of red-stained war fog has yet to lift. First, it is Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenary soldiers that initially claimed credit for taking the town, and its credibility is always in question. 

Ukraine’s initial reticence to comment on a highly fluid situation was replaced on Wednesday by denials of the Russian claims. In a Telegram post, the Ukrainian  deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, wrote that “after the losses suffered, the enemy once again replaced their units, increased the number of Wagner mercenaries and is attempting to break through the defenses of our troops and completely capture the town, but they have no success.” 

Other than that, few details were provided, but the Donetsk regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told the Kyiv Independent on Wednesday that “the Ukrainian military is fighting for every centimeter of Donetsk including Soledar.”

If the Russian claims are not spurious, then the capture of Soledar with its vast salt mines would have more symbolic and possibly commercial value for Moscow than actual military value. Even Wagner’s head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, seemed to condition his group’s claim of a battlefront win, saying via various Russian news agencies that “a cauldron has been formed in the center of the city in which urban fighting is going on.”

Earlier in the week, President Zelensky said that “the whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes,” and that “this is what madness looks like.”

Even if Moscow has wrested control of Soledar from the defending Ukrainian forces, it might not last. In a statement, the Russian defense ministry said that “airborne units blocked Soledar from the north and south” and that “fighting is ongoing.”

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Wednesday said that Russian forces had “positive dynamics in advancing” in Soledar, but as for echoing Mr. Prigozhin’s bold claims he held back, only saying, “Let’s not rush and wait for official statements.”

In Moscow’s machinations, taking Soledar could serve as a springboard for conquering other parts of the Donbas, and Donetsk in particular, that are still held by Ukraine in what has become a protracted war of attrition between Russian invasion forces and Ukrainian soldiers. 

There are indications that Moscow is already using the ambiguous news coming out of Soledar, at least as of midweek, to lay the groundwork for more pitched battles. Russian media reported that a Russian military unit found Ukrainian maps at an abandoned position outside the city of Donetsk that purportedly indicated arrows pointing to Rostov-on-Don, a major Russian city near the eastern edge of the Sea of Azov, and south of Luhansk. 

If Ukraine mounts a cross-border offensive of any consequence against Rostov-on-Don in the near future, the fallout from the fight for Soledar could pale next to the ensuing violence. Given the near-total Russian destruction of Mariupol last year, a Ukrainian desire for some serious Russian comeuppance in the new year cannot be discounted. 

In the meantime, after four days of relentless fighting that shows no sign of letting up, the cold winter ground in and around Soledar remains hellish and hot.