The two activists, a man and a woman, were on Tuesday transported to a hospital in the eastern Polish city of Lublin and their condition was described as “stable,” state news agency PAP reported.
Wojciech Andrusiewicz, the spokesman for Poland’s health ministry, told PAP that the pair had been distributing humanitarian supplies in Ukraine’s frontline town of Bakhmut when a mortar shell exploded nearby.
He added: “Unfortunately, the female volunteer had to have part of her leg amputated. The man suffered a wound from a shell splinter.”
Andrusiewicz told the PAP news agency that after being notified of the injuries to the two Polish volunteers, Poland’s health ministry immediately arranged to have them brought back to the country.
The pair were transported to the hospital in Lublin in cooperation with a Polish charity, Humanosh.
The health ministry spokesman said: “A huge thank you to staff at the Humanosh Foundation, without whom the transport of the injured volunteers would have been much more difficult.”
Poland’s Health Minister Adam Niedzielski visited the injured volunteers at the Lublin hospital, officials told reporters.
The town of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has been the focus of intense fighting as Russian forces seek to advance in an area where they have been seeking desperately to make progress since early summer, news outlets reported.
Russia has not captured Soledar: ISW
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said on Tuesday night that Russian forces “conducted ground attacks across the Donetsk Oblast frontline,” making gains around the salt-mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut.
However, they “have not captured the settlement, despite false claims,” the ISW reported.
In its latest analysis of the war in Ukraine, the US think tank also said: “Russian forces have not captured the entirety of Soledar despite several false Russian claims that the city has fallen and that Bakhmut risks imminent encirclement.”
According to the US experts, several Russian sources claimed that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group forces advanced into the west of Soledar on January 10.
However, the Wagner Group’s financier Yevgeny Prigozhin “refuted these claims, remarking that Wagner Group forces are still fighting against concerted Ukrainian resistance,” the ISW noted.
The US think tank added: “ISW has only observed visual confirmation of Wagner Group forces in central Soledar as of January 10. The reality of block-by-block control of terrain in Soledar is obfuscated by the dynamic nature of urban combat, however, and Russian forces have largely struggled to make significant tactical gains in the Soledar area for months.”
The ISW also said: “Even taking the most generous Russian claims at face value, the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut.”
The Washington-based think tank reiterated its assessment that “control of Soledar will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut.”
Ukraine holds Soledar despite fierce fighting: deputy defence minister
Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said that Ukrainian forces were "holding on" in Soledar amid heavy fighting for the town, the PAP news agency reported.
Maliar said on the social messaging app Telegram: "Heavy fighting for the city of Soledar is ongoing in Donetsk Oblast. Russians continue to actively storm the city despite huge losses of personnel.”
She added, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda website: “Approaches to our positions are covered with the bodies of Russian soldiers. Only a very strong nation can fight so desperately with such a powerful enemy."
Maliar added that the Ukrainian forces “continue to hold the line courageously," according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian troops continued to make gains along the Svatove-Kreminna line, in the eastern Luhansk province, the ISW also reported.
Wednesday is day 322 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, rynekzdrowia.pl, understandingwar.org, Ukrainska Pravda