LUGANSK, Jan.12 (TASS) - Hospitals in a number of Ukrainian cities are overflowing with wounded troops from the Donetsk People’s Republic’s town of Soledar, commander of the Troy volunteer special forces unit Vladimir Novikov (codenamed Alabay) told TASS.

"All hospitals in the Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk regions are really full of wounded troops, mostly from Soledar," he said, adding that it was hard to estimate Kiev’s losses in Soledar because the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ command sought to withhold information on killed troops.

According to Novikov, the Ukrainian army suffered huge losses in Soledar though the Ukrainian command had "sent the most capable forces" there.

Former Ambassador of the Lugansk People's Republic to Moscow Rodion Miroshnik said earlier that Ukraine had lost about 25,000 people in the battles for Soledar and those losses were irreparable.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said that Soledar, which had been an arena of hostilities over the past days, had been taken under control by combatants of the Wagner private military company and that there was a pocket in the city center where fighting was raging. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov reported later on Wednesday that Russian forces had blocked Soledar from the north and south and fighting was going on in the city. Yan Gagin, a military and political expert from the DPR, previously told TASS that up to 500 Ukrainian service members might remain in Soledar.