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Soledar claims and an Armenian exercise postponement
Summary
On 10 January 2023, competing accounts emerged over control of Soledar, while Armenia's prime minister announced a postponement of joint exercises with Russia.
Who controlled Soledar on 10 January 2023? The answer depended on whom one asked. The UK Defence Ministry said Russian forces were in control of most of the town in Donetsk Oblast. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader, went further and claimed the city had been taken in its entirety.
The gap between the two accounts was the notable feature of the day. London's assessment pointed to a town largely, but not wholly, in Russian hands, while Prigozhin's claim left no room for doubt. The fighting there formed part of the wider Battle of Donbas in the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the engagements in and around the settlement were later described as the Battle of Soledar.
A different signal from Yerevan
The same day brought a notable development in the region's security politics. Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that joint military exercises with the Russian Armed Forces, planned under the Collective Security Treaty Organization, would be postponed this year.
His stated reason was the organization's refusal to condemn Azerbaijan over the disputes between the two countries. The announcement placed a public question mark over military cooperation between Armenia and Russia within the alliance framework.
Two different questions
The two stories were separate, one concerning a battlefield in eastern Ukraine and the other concerning alliance commitments in the South Caucasus. Both, however, turned on the same issue: who holds what, and who stands behind whom. In Soledar, the question was territorial control and who could credibly claim it. In Yerevan, it was whether a security bloc would act on the concerns of one of its members.
