It remains uncertain whether Russia's claim is true and that they really did gain control over Soledar, a small town just north of Bakhmut, but even if they did, it is a small victory for Russia amidst a huge amount of defeats on every other front, and it came at a huge cost of lives for the Russian side. The Wagner Group, formally an illegal combatant in the war even according to Russian law, sent wave after wave of foot soldiers into the battlefield as cannon fodder. Most of these were probably convicts who were taken directly from prison and conscripted into their ranks after a decree by Putin. Such blatant disregard for human lives is definitely not a winning strategy in the long run, but the Wagner Group, led by the "private entrepreneur" Jevgenij Prigosjin, seems to have thrown absolutely everything into this meaningless fight over a piece of abandoned wasteland. Horrific photos from the area look like throwbacks to World War I, with shallow trenches littered with bodies and Russian troops literally walking over their fallen comrades in a desperate struggle to gain ground.
This looks like a last ditch attempt at getting Putin a victory, any victory, at any cost, to feed the propaganda network inside Russia. Even if it ends up being a victory, it is small, temporary, meaningless, and by far outweighed by losses in other areas.
This is an act of desperation.
