Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The war in eastern Ukraine has shifted into a new rhythm this autumn.
After a summer of grinding Russian advances in the Donbas, the latest frontline assessment from one of the most watched analytical shops in Washington flips the usual script. Ukrainian units are the ones advancing on more than one sector of the front, while Russian attacks are mostly running into walls.
In its October 7-8 assessments, the Institute for the Study of War says Ukrainian forces advanced east of Oleksandrivka in the Donetsk region, while Russian attacks across most of the front produced no confirmed territorial gains.
Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region make up the contested Donbas that Russia has demanded Ukraine withdraw from.
A source associated with Russia’s own Western forces grouping also acknowledged, as cited by ISW, that Ukrainian troops control the borderland settlements of Novoplatonivka, Hrekivka, and Druzheliubivka across Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts, despite Russian claims to have taken them.
Operation Vivaldi presses the Lyman front
In the Lyman sector, Ukrainian units are continuing counterattacks toward the eastern bank of the Zherebets River as part of Operation Vivaldi, a four-phase counteroffensive launched May 22 in northern Donetsk Oblast.
By September 30, with three of four planned phases complete, Ukraine’s presidential office said Vivaldi had returned 176 square kilometers to Ukrainian control, taken 250 Russian prisoners, and inflicted more than 5,000 Russian killed and wounded. The office noted these figures have not been independently verified.
According to the Euromaidan Press account of the operation, Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps found and exploited gaps along the flanks of the Russian 20th and 25th combined-arms armies, breaking into their rear and forcing a pullback across the Zherebets River to avoid encirclement.
Separately in the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian troops cleared about 10 square kilometers of forest east of Vovchansk and knocked out three Russian infiltration groups, according to ISW’s October 5 assessment as reported by Gwara Media.
Russian offensive going backward
The dual-front progress fits a broader pattern. Based on geolocated evidence tallied by ISW, Russian forces captured about 175 square kilometers in September while losing roughly 256 square kilometers to Ukrainian operations, for a net loss of about 81 square kilometers that month, Kyiv Post reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told officials, by contrast, that Russian forces had seized 1,301 square kilometers in September, a figure Putin offered without independently verifiable evidence and that independent battlefield maps did not support, according to the same ISW analysis.
Even inside the Vovchansk pocket, the picture is not one-way. ISW notes that Russian troops have been infiltrating other parts of the same area, with footage pointing to Russian advances in northeastern Vovchansk and to the north of the villages of Vovchanski Khutory and Zybyne.
