KYIV, Jan 11 - The fate of a devastated salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday as Ukraine said its forces were holding out against a furious Russian onslaught in one of the fiercest and bloodiest recent ground battles of the nearly 11-month war.

Russian forces using jets, mortars and rockets bombarded Soledar in what a Ukrainian military officer said was an unrelenting assault, The Associated Press reported.

The officer, near Soledar, told The Associated Press the pattern is that first the Russians send one or two waves of soldiers, many from the private Russian military contractor Wagner Group, who take heavy casualties as they probe the Ukrainian defenses.

When Ukrainian troops have taken casualties and are exhausted, the Russians send a fresh wave of highly-trained soldiers, paratroopers or special forces, said the Ukrainian officer, who insisted on anonymity for security reasons.

Soledar’s fall, while unlikely to provide a turning point in the war, would be a prize for a Kremlin starved of good news from the battlefield in recent months. It would also offer Russian troops a springboard to conquer other areas of Donetsk province that remain under Ukrainian control, such as the nearby strategic city of Bakhmut.

Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province, which together make up the Donbas region bordering Russia, were Moscow’s main stated territorial targets in invading Ukraine, but the fighting has stood mostly at a stalemate.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar and the spokesman for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces, Serhiy Cherevaty, denied Russian claims that Soledar had fallen, but Malyar acknowledged heavy fighting.

Late Tuesday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s owner, claimed on his Russian social media platform that his soldiers had seized control of Soledar, though he also said fighting continued in a “cauldron” in the city’s center.

Russian forces had achieved “positive dynamics in advancing” in Soledar, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, stopping short of declaring its capture.

“Let’s not rush, and wait for official statements,” he said.

Soledar, known for salt mining and processing, has little intrinsic value but it lies at a strategic point 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces want to surround.

Taking Bakhmut would disrupt Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces to press toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province.

Soledar’s fall would make “holding Bakhmut much more precarious for Ukraine,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia Studies at the CAN nonprofit research organization in Arlington, Virginia, noted Wednesday.

The war of attrition, with heavy casualties, may make a Russian victory as deadly as a defeat.

“I don’t think the outcome at Bakhmut is that significant compared to what it costs Russia to achieve it,” Kofman said in a tweet. (ap/ez)