Ukrainian forces have derailed Russia’s plan to encircle and occupy remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Donetsk region this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, concluded in an assessment based primarily on open-source intelligence.
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The Russian campaign centered on a deep pincer movement targeting what the report calls the “fortress belt” – a defensive and logistical network protecting the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbass – advancing from Lyman in the north and Dobropillia in the southwest, with the two arms intended to connect near Barvinkove in the Kharkiv region.
Achieving such an encirclement would have greatly contributed to Moscow’s long-standing goal of occupying the entire Donetsk region and would have given the Kremlin something to show Russian society for the costs of war.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive on the Lyman axis, called Operation Vivaldi, dismantled the northern arm of this pincer movement.
Ukrainian forces advanced along the Ridkodub-Nove-Novomykhailivka line in the north and the Yarova-Drobysheve-Stavky line in the south, collapsing the salient that Russia had built to threaten Sloviansk from the northeast and forcing Russian units onto the defensive.
Commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, Andrii Biletskyi, said the first three phases of the operation, from mid-to-late September, liberated 176 square kilometers of territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the figure at between 125 and 140 square kilometers as of October 3, adding that Russian losses had increased sharply over the previous two to three months.
ISW suggested that the operation may have been more successful than kyiv’s official figures reflect.
The defeat of the Northern Tenaille forced Russia to abandon its plan to advance on Sloviansk from the northeast and deprived it of positions intended to threaten the northern approaches to the fortress belt.
Ukraine’s retained control of the Lyman region also preserved key supply routes. Russian units present on other parts of the front may have been redeployed to reinforce the northern sector.
Russia’s southwestward advance from the Pokrovsk-Dobropillia region – the surviving arm of the initial encirclement – now faces far more ambitious goals on its own.
ISW considers the collapse of the northern pincer to be an operational failure, as Russia not only lost ground around Lyman, but also a key part of the fortress belt campaign plan.
Russian forces maintain limited gains around Kostyantynivka and east of Sloviansk, but have struggled to maintain the pace of their advance in both areas.
The ISW has argued that its reliance on infantry infiltration, drones, and bombing can produce gradual attrition, but cannot generate the rapid mechanized maneuvers needed to collapse Ukraine’s defenses on the scale Moscow requires.
The situation remains fluid, the institute adds, and Russian forces will likely adapt over time, but for now, Ukraine appears to have halted its advance.
A new Russian mobilization and technological adaptation could shift the balance, although neither would necessarily allow a breakthrough.
Putin’s September figures disputed
The ISW also disputed claims, widely circulated in pro-government Russian media, that Russian forces occupied an additional 1,301 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in September alone, about two and a half times the figure reported in previous months.
Based on geotagged photo and video footage, satellite imagery and visually confirmed data, the institute calculated that Russian assault units had actually been pushed back by at least 80 square kilometers in September.
Russia’s net retreat in September amounted to 175.18 square kilometers, including areas where it temporarily entered but did not hold.
Putin told the Valdai Club last week that Russia now occupies 89% of the Donetsk region. ISW estimates that the percentage of territories occupied by Russia in the Ukrainian region does not exceed 81%.
The institute believes that Putin’s claims about Russian breakthroughs in September were “so far from reality that they resemble hallucinations.”
He could not determine whether Putin knows the numbers he cites are false or whether he has come to believe the fabricated data on the first line he receives, a product of what the ISW describes as a deeply ingrained culture of dishonesty in Russian military command.
Gn world
