Ukrainian monitoring project DeepState updated its map of the fighting in the Lyman sector of the Donetsk Region, marking the territory around the village of Serednie in Kramatorsk District as having been liberated by Ukrainian forces. According to analysts, Ukrainian troops also pushed Russian units back from positions near Shandryholove. Both villages are located on the approaches to the city of Lyman, which has been the site of static, positional fighting for several months.
On the afternoon of Sept. 15, the Ukrainian offensive in this sector was publicly confirmed for the first time. In a video address posted to Telegram, Andriy Biletsky, the commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, announced that operation was codenamed Vivaldi, adding that while it was operating under conditions of information silence, the corps’ units eliminated pockets of Russian infiltration across 75 square kilometers and deoccupied a further 10 square kilometers in the areas of Novoselivka, Oleksandrivka, Yarova, and Korovii Yar. In addition to clearing the territory, Biletsky noted that Ukrainian drone units had also cut the enemy’s logistics, forcing Russian troops to relocate their fuel and lubricant depots and dismantle a pipeline, shifting their supply lines into Russia’s Voronezh Region. Biletsky estimated the personnel losses of Russia’s 20th and 25th armies at roughly 1,500 soldiers, while equipment losses totaled more than 12,000 drones and hundreds of armored vehicles, along with artillery pieces and other vehicles.
At the same time, Biletsky cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the operation’s ultimate goal, saying rumors about Ukrainian troops aiming to reach the Chornyi Zherebets River were premature. “Our operation is called ‘Vivaldi.’ And Vivaldi, as everyone knows, has four seasons. This is only the first of them,” Biletsky said, promising further official updates on the corps’ progress.
The scale of the operation had previously been reported by independent OSINT analysts who had been following the situation near Lyman for several months. In particular, French analyst Clément Molin noted that Ukrainian units had launched a counteroffensive north of the city back in late May, but information about it was deliberately withheld until now. By Molin’s estimate, Ukrainian forces used that time to cut off the Russian salient north of Lyman and liberate more than 200 square kilometers of land, pushing the enemy back across the Zherebets River.
Molin called the operation one of Ukraine’s most significant victories of 2026, noting that its success could complicate further Russian advances on Lyman, Izium, and Sloviansk, thereby delaying the occupying forces’ progress in northern Donbas. Similar assessments came from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). As its experts wrote, Russian military bloggers are already acknowledging Ukrainian counterattacks in the Lyman sector and are increasingly criticizing the Russian command for masking territorial losses with fabricated reports of success.