Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps is pressing ahead with its Operation Vivaldi counteroffensive north of Lyman in the Donetsk region, releasing fresh combat footage as fighting intensifies around the strategic railway hub. The corps says the operation has restored roughly 125 square kilometres to Ukrainian control across two phases — though independent battlefield mappers have so far confirmed only part of those claimed gains.
The offensive, publicly acknowledged for the first time on September 15, is one of the few Ukrainian ground operations of 2026 to retake meaningful territory, and Moscow is visibly struggling to contain it.
Two phases, 125 square kilometres claimed
Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi, the corps commander, announced the operation on September 15, saying Ukrainian units had been working under strict information silence for months to clear Russian infiltration pockets in the Lyman sector. According to the corps, the first phase cleared or liberated 85 square kilometres: the village of Serednie was liberated outright, while Russian infiltrators were cleared from Novoselivka, Yarova, Oleksandrivka and the outskirts of Korovii Yar.
On September 20 the corps announced a second phase, claiming the liberation of Shandryholove and Derylove and full control of Drobysheve, adding another 40 square kilometres for a claimed total of 125 — about 50 of them, the corps says, retaken from outright occupation rather than merely cleared of infiltrators.
Independent verification is partial. The Ukrainian mapping project DeepState marked Shandryholove and Derylove as under Ukrainian control on September 20 but made no mention of Drobysheve. The Institute for the Study of War, in its September 20–21 assessments, concluded that neither Ukrainian nor Russian forces had made confirmed advances. Russia's defence ministry, for its part, insists the Ukrainian assault groups are not succeeding — the same ministry that previously claimed to have captured Derylove in September 2025, Shandryholove the same month, and Drobysheve in March 2026.
Elite Russian drone unit driven from the sector
One Ukrainian claim does carry corroboration from unusual quarters: the 3rd Army Corps says its forces crippled Russia's elite Rubicon unmanned-systems formation in the Lyman–Borova sector, disabling its command-and-control system, destroying its logistics, ammunition depots and drone launch sites, and killing experienced operators — losses severe enough, Kyiv says, that the Russian command pulled what remained of the unit out of the sector to preserve it.
Rubicon was widely regarded as Russia's premier drone formation, and its reported removal weakens Russian reconnaissance and strike reach along this stretch of front. The Kremlin-connected Rybar channel has itself acknowledged that Ukrainian forces regained positions in the Lyman area in August and early September and were attempting to retake Shandryholove and Zarechnoye — a rare admission of Ukrainian gains from a Russian military-linked source.
How Vivaldi works: infiltration hunting, logistics strangulation, combined arms
Details emerging from the corps describe an operation built for modern war rather than brute force. Before any ground advance, unmanned-systems units struck Russian logistics — pipelines, fuel depots and supply routes — forcing Moscow to reroute its fuel and lubricant supplies. A joint headquarters was set up to coordinate special forces, reconnaissance troops, military intelligence and border guard units under a single plan.
The assault itself has relied on small tactical groups moving through ravines and gullies to seize tree lines and strongpoints, and — in what the corps describes as a first — unmanned ground vehicles airlifted behind Russian lines during a flanking manoeuvre. New footage released this week by FPV drone operators of the 60th Mechanised Brigade's FATUM unit shows strikes on Russian armoured vehicles, a Grad multiple rocket launcher and personnel on the Lyman front.
Why Lyman matters
Lyman is a key railway hub that Russian forces seized in May 2022 and were driven from on October 1, 2022. The Institute for the Study of War describes the Lyman axis as the northern pincer of Russia's offensive toward the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk "fortress belt" — so Ukrainian pressure here directly complicates Moscow's plans for its main 2026 objectives.
Biletskyi, explaining the operation's musical name on September 15, said: "Vivaldi has four seasons, and this is only the first of them." If the corps is to be believed, two seasons have now played out, with more to come. The honest caveat is that much of the claimed 125 square kilometres awaits independent confirmation. But the direction of travel — a Ukrainian corps conducting deliberate, combined-arms offensive operations while Russian milbloggers concede ground — is not the picture Moscow wants the world to see.
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