DeepState updated the map of hostilities in the Lyman direction in Donetsk Oblast and marked the area around the village of Sredneye in Kramatorsk Raion as liberated by Ukrainian forces. According to the project, Russian units were also pushed back from positions near Shandrigolovo; both settlements are located in the Lyman community on the approaches to Lyman, where positional battles have been ongoing for several months.
In the afternoon of September 15, the offensive in this sector was publicly confirmed for the first time by Commander of the 3rd Army Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Andriy Biletskyi. He said that the operation was named “Vivaldi”.
Biletskyi said that the corps units, under information silence, eliminated centers of Russian infiltration over an area of 75 km². Another 10 km², he said, were de-occupied in the area of Novoselivka, Oleksandrivka, Yarova, and Korovyi Yar.
He also stated that drone units cut the enemy’s logistics, after which Russian troops moved fuel and lubricants depots and dismantled a pipeline, shifting supply to Voronezh Oblast. Biletskyi estimated the losses of the Russian 20th and 25th armies at about 1,500 soldiers, more than 12,000 drones, and hundreds of armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and vehicles.
Biletskyi urged not to rush to conclusions about the operation’s final objective and said that rumors of Ukrainian troops reaching the Chornyi Zherebets River were premature. He promised new official reports on the corps’ successes.
Earlier, independent OSINT analysts who had been tracking the situation near Lyman for several months also wrote about the scale of the operation. French analyst Clément Molin claimed that Ukrainian units began a counteroffensive north of the city as early as the end of May and that during this time, in his assessment, more than 200 km² of territory had been liberated and the Russian salient north of Lyman had been cut off. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also noted that Russian military bloggers acknowledge Ukrainian counterattacks in this direction and criticize the command for fabricated reports about successes.
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