Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps has recaptured a large swath of ground north of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, reversing months of Russian pressure and disrupting plans for a northern drive toward Sloviansk. Analysts estimate Ukrainian forces retook roughly 150–240 square kilometers after a campaign that began in May and stayed largely unreported until late August and early September.
The operation opened on 22 May when a mechanized battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade, supported by the 60th and 66th Mechanized Brigades under 3rd Army Corps command, struck Russian positions around Nove, about 15 km north of Lyman. Electronic warfare jammed many Russian drones that day. Subsequent months of coordinated assaults, forest fighting, and drone strikes pushed Russian units back toward the Zherebets River, collapsing a salient Moscow had spent more than a year building as a staging area for an envelopment of Lyman and a later march on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Lyman’s railway junction remains the prize. Control of the hub and the roads feeding it complicates Russian logistics into northern Donetsk and forces the Center Group of Forces onto less favorable lines. Official confirmation came mid-September when corps commander Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletskyi publicly named the effort Operation Vivaldi, reporting clearance of infiltrators across tens of square kilometers and the liberation of settlements including Serednie. Open-source mapping generally shows larger gains than the first official figures.
Fighting has not stopped. Ukrainian units continue to contest Russian encirclement claims near Kharkiv while grinding through the wrecked Serebryansky Forest, a pine reserve on the Donetsk–Luhansk border that has become a drone-saturated kill zone of artillery, mines, and small assault teams. The Lyman success is operational rather than decisive—far smaller than 2022 counteroffensives—but it has bought time for the fortress cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and shown that patient, quiet corps-level attacks can still erase Russian groundwork.
