Ukraine has retaken over 100 square kilometers of territory from Russian troops around a key eastern settlement within roughly two weeks, a top Ukrainian commander has said.
Kyiv has captured three villages and 101 square kilometers of territory (about 39 square miles) near the city of Lyman, in Ukraine's embattled eastern Donetsk region, Brigadier General Andriy Biletskyi, who heads up Ukraine's Third Army Corps deployed in the area, said on Wednesday.
Biletskyi confirmed in mid-September Ukraine had mounted a counteroffensive north of Lyman, where Russia had managed to break through and advance earlier in the year.
Russia's gains north of the city put Ukraine's positions in danger, and could have opened up a path for Moscow to advance toward the Donetsk cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Both are known as "fortress" settlements, key to Ukraine's defensive lines.
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The Ukrainian effort to push back Russia's grip near Lyman, dubbed "Operation Vivaldi," had retaken 176 square kilometers (about 68 square miles) overall, Biletskyi said in late September.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said during a visit to the Lyman area on September 30 the operation was "important in many ways" for Ukraine's defense. Kyiv says Operation Vivaldi forced Moscow to quickly redeploy reinforcements to the Lyman area, weakening its positions elsewhere on the front lines.
Kyiv has reclaimed a total of 277 square kilometers and 16 villages since the start of Operation Vivaldi, according to the Third Army Corps.
Russia originally captured the Donetsk city in the first weeks of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine from February 2022, but Kyiv retook Lyman during its lightning counteroffensive that fall.
Russia hadn't managed to retake control of the city, but had carried out operations in and near Lyman in the years since.
Operation Vivaldi "began with the elimination of Russian infiltration, grew into a rapid and large-scale offensive," the Third Army Corps said.
Western analysts have accused Russia of "exaggerating" its advances in northern Ukraine to distract from recent Ukrainian progress north of Lyman.
Russia's defense minister, Andrey Belousov, and a senior Russian commander for troops deployed to Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region said in late September Moscow had seized more than 250 square kilometers of territory in the region during the summer.
But open-source evidence shows Russia has captured or infiltrated 151.66 square kilometers of Sumy since the start of this year, including 36.78 square kilometers between the start of June and the end of August, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that tracks changes to the front line in Ukraine, said last month.
The claims are designed to "divert attention from Ukraine’s elimination of the Russian salient north of Lyman in recent months," the ISW said, referring to Kyiv recapturing territory from Russia.
Russia has said it has annexed the Donetsk region, along with Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine.
But it doesn't fully control all four regions, and its hold on these territories is not internationally recognized.
Moscow also controls Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine which it seized in 2014. Kyiv has vowed to reclaim all Russian-held regions.