A senior Ukrainian field commander on Wednesday announced his troops had ended a months-long offensive that had inflicted 1,000s of casualties on Russian forces and pushed them back dozens of kilometers, both of which claims were confirmed by internal unit information feeds and independent observers.
Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky, commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU) 3rd Corps, in a statement released to news agencies and social media said that his troops had successfully wrapped up the fourth and final phase of Operation Vivaldi, in the process liberating 101 km² (40 square miles) and hitting Russian troops in the north-eastern Lyman sector with 3,000+ new casualties.
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Independent analysts have widely confirmed the Vivaldi Operation launched in July has gained substantial ground and seriously damaged Russian units, with the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in an Oct. 1 campaign review crediting Biletsky’s troops for re-capturing close to 300 square km (120 square miles) of Kremlin-controlled territory in operations east of Lyman.
Biletsky, in a Sept. 28 briefing about the third phase of the Vivaldi Operation, said his troops to that date had liberated 176 square kilometers, re-captured five villages and inflicted about 2,000 Russian casualties, among them 250+ prisoners of war. During the fourth phase, Biletsky said on Wednesday, three more villages – Zelena Dolyna, Lypove, and Kolodiazi – had been liberated by Ukrainian troops. He did not mention his forces having taken Russian prisoners.
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Third Corps forces carried out the attacks using combined arms tactics with dismounted and mounted infantry working in tandem with drone swarms, first to infiltrate to Russian positions and then to cut them off from supply and isolate them, before systematically mopping them up, Biletsky said.
“[T]he key to the operation was speed. We did not give the enemy time to replace his losses or to construct a viable defense. The disoriented commanders of the enemy made mistake after mistake,” Biletsky stated.
Overall, throughout Vivaldi operation, 3rd Corps forces returned Ukrainian control to “more than” 16 towns and villages and 277 km² (120 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, and inflicted total enemy losses of at least 8,000 troops, Biletsky said. Kyiv Post review of battle reports and OSINT trackers found battle lines in the Lyman sector generally consistent with Biletsky’s statements.
Accounts in 3rd Corps internal unit feeds reviewed by Kyiv Post found multiple reports of accumulating Russian casualties mostly to drone strike. Neither Russia nor Ukraine publish their own actual casualty counts.
“Vivaldi has demonstrated that an offensive is possible with outnumbered forces using asymmetric tactics. It is possible to, simultaneously, maintain an effective defense in other sectors,” Biletsky said.
In an evaluation generally shared by Ukrainian military analysts, Biletsky said that his 3rd Corps troops, by gaining ground and defeating defending Russian troops in positions east of Lyman, had scored an operational success by pushing Kremlin forces away from the logistically critical Slovyansk-Kramatorsk highway, thereby ensuring defenses in both those cities – named by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin as top objectives for Russian conquest – would stay well-supplied.
A parallel offensive led primarily by Ukrainian air assault infantry and paratrooper units has since mid-summer used similar drone + infiltrating-infantry tactics to turn back Russian assaults further south in the Donetsk region, to the east of the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Together those successes made Ukrainian aggregate terrain gains in September 2026 slightly greater than Russia’s for the first time since June 2025.
Ukraine’s Slovyansk-Kramatorsk counter-offensive is still ongoing
Biletsky, in closing comments, suggested a possible follow-up to the Vivaldi Operation was being planned, saying, “At the very least there is still Wagner and Bach.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry during the Lyman/Vivaldi operation has steadfastly insisted Kremlin forces are holding their ground, and, in some places, advancing.
Russian milbloggers – even vehemently pro-Moscow content-creators, in contrast – have warned for weeks of a worsening situation and Russian forces under heavy pressure from Ukrainian drone swarms and infantry assaults.
Popular milblogger Mikhail Zvinchuk (450,000+ followers), in an Oct. 6 post on the Lyman battles, said Russian defenses were unable to stop infiltrating iUkrainian infantry, and that Ukrainian drone strikes were preventing Russian troops from digging in.
“The enemy has numerical superiority and a significant advantage in drones,” Zvinchuk wrote.
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In the Wednesday announcement, 3rd Corps named combat units participating in the Vivlaldi operation, many of which were among the most combat-experienced in the entire AFU.
Among 3rd Corps units involved in the offensive, Biletsky said, were the 3rd Assault Brigade, the 60th Separate Mechanized Brigade, the 125th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade, the 3rd Separate Reconnaissance Battalion, the 25th Separate Anti-Tank Battalion, and the 21st Separate Special Operations Battalion “Kraken,” a unit raised in Kharkiv at the start of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, from retired commando civilians at the time, who volunteered to return to service to fight Russia.
The 3rd Assault Brigade, a regular army unit raised in Kyiv originally as untrained militia on the first day of Russia’s second invasion, is widely considered one of the AFU’s most effective fighting outfits and an early proponent of closely coordinated infantry-drone tactics.
Reinforcements attached to the 3rd Corps included the 66th Separate Mechanized Brigade, the 3rd Border Detachment, the 10th “Dozor” Mobile Border Detachment, and commando groups from the 8th Special Operations Forces Regiment, Biletsky said.
Along with Kyiv’s 3rd Assault, four units participating in the Vivaldi offensive – the 3rd Reconnaissance, the 21st Kraken, the 10th Dozor, and the 8th Special Operations – are long-established, veteran infantry outfits with excellent fighting records, specializing in infiltration, raiding, and behind-the-lines operations supported by drones, Kyiv Post research found.
Biletsky named the National Guard’s “Lasar’s Group,” the special operations battalion from the regular army’s K-2 Regiment, and unmanned air vehicle (UAV) units from the Special Operations Center A as the drone units giving the Vivaldi operation air support. All three are long-established, crack flying outfits with average pilots having flown hundreds of combat sorties and experienced operators thousands.
The K-2 Regiment, formally known in the AFU as the 20th Separate Brigade Unmanned Systems K-2 (Ukrainian: 20-та окрема бригада безпілотних систем «К-2») was raised in 2017 as a squad of drone enthusiasts. According to AFU lore, it probably was one of the first military units in history to employ civilian MAVIC drones in a war and then modify them for combat purposes.
K-2 was, reportedly, the first AFU unit to convert a commercial drone into a bomber jury-rigged to drop grenades, and to employ 24/7 small drone presence with a “cab rank” of strike drones ready to attack over a battlefield target. In 2025, according to a unit statement, K-2 became the world’s first military unit to field a dedicated Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) sub-unit.