Operation Vivaldi Phase Three: The Bluff at Lyman That Took Back 51 Square Kilometers and 250 Prisoners

In brief: Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps says Operation Vivaldi phase three is complete: 51 square kilometers retaken near Lyman, the villages of Nove, Ridkodub and Katerynivka liberated, around 2,000 Russian troops lost and more than 250 captured, by the corps' own tally. The result was built on a deliberate deception that pointed Russian reserves at the wrong axis, and on ground robots that did the closest, ugliest work.

Part of our Ukraine War Analysis coverage.

Operation Vivaldi phase three ended the way its commander says it was designed: with Russia looking hard in the wrong direction. On September 28, Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi announced that the 3rd Army Corps had closed out the third season of its counteroffensive around Lyman in northern Donetsk Oblast, and for once the numbers came with names attached: Nove, Ridkodub, Katerynivka.

What Operation Vivaldi Phase Three Took Back

Photo: ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

By the corps' account, phase three liberated Nove, Ridkodub and Katerynivka and restored full control over Karpivka and Novomykhailivka, adding 51 square kilometers and bringing the operation's total to 176 square kilometers since it was publicly announced on September 15. The corps puts Russian losses for this phase at around 2,000 killed and wounded, with more than 250 taken prisoner. United24 Media reports the cumulative Russian toll across all three phases at over 5,000. These are the corps' own figures, and the channel treats them as reported estimates until the mapping catches up, but the settlement names are concrete claims that can be checked against geolocated footage in the coming days.

The prisoner count is the detail Biletskyi kept returning to. Entire units surrendered together, he said, including officers, pilots and artillerymen: in his words, the cinematic "Russians don't surrender" turned into the reality of whole positions giving up en masse. Vivaldi's first season had already cleared some 75 square kilometers and liberated Serednie; the second, announced September 20, took Shandryholove and Derylove. Phase three was the one Russia was supposed to see coming.

The Bluff: Shandryholove to Zelena Dolyna Was Never the Axis

Photo: ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

It did see an offensive coming, just not this one. Biletskyi told ArmyInform that Russian command was convinced the main strike would run from Shandryholove toward Zelena Dolyna, the natural continuation of phase two. The corps fed that conviction deliberately. According to United24 Media, the 3rd Army Corps stood up a dedicated deception cell that analyzed what Russian intelligence would plausibly believe, then seeded a false operational picture, planting misleading information rather than relying on radio silence alone.

Russian reserves spent the critical days counterattacking along the decoy axis. Meanwhile the real blow, aimed at Nove and the high ground around it, landed on positions that were never reinforced. "The enemy slept through the main strike" is how Biletskyi put it. Nove mattered because it worked as a hub of the Russian bridgehead in the sector: losing it did not just cost Moscow a village, it cost the anchor of the local position.

Robots Through the Wire

The other signature of this phase was who did the breaching. The corps says it converted Soviet era BTR-60 armored carriers into remotely operated kamikaze vehicles and drove them into fortified Russian strongpoints. Smaller unmanned ground vehicles fitted with Bullspike rocket launchers were delivered behind Russian lines by heavy bomber drones, in what the corps describes as the first documented airborne robot assault of the war. "The occupiers thought they were being attacked by an entire assault group," the corps said. "In reality, they were being taken apart by robots."

The channel flagged this direction of travel when the Rubicon drone unit pulled back from the Lyman sector after Vivaldi wrecked its logistics earlier in September. Beat the enemy's best drone formation, and the airspace over the next assault belongs to you. Phase three is what that ownership looks like when it is converted into ground.

Why Lyman Matters: The Kramatorsk Math

Photo: Third Army Corps via ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

Lyman is not a prestige objective, it is arithmetic. Russia's operational design in Donetsk has long involved bypassing Kramatorsk from the north, and the Lyman axis is the northern shoulder of that plan. Every kilometer Vivaldi claws back forces Russia to defend ground it expected to attack from, while Russian assault pressure stays fixed on Kostiantynivka and Dobropillia further south, the sector where a Russian general earned his Gold Star for telling Putin a city had fallen when it had not. Our September front line survey mapped both sides of that ledger; Vivaldi is the entry that keeps moving.

Why It Matters

Confirmed, named, multi-village counteroffensive success has been rare in 2026, and this one lands at a loaded moment. The same weekend the corps closed out phase three, Russia put more than 2,200 attack drones, 1,630 aerial bombs and 38 missiles into Ukraine in a single week by President Zelensky's count, and Washington leaned on Kyiv to ease its refinery campaign as part of the energy ceasefire haggling. A corps level proof that Ukraine can still take ground back, and take prisoners by the hundreds while doing it, is negotiating material: it is the concrete version of Kyiv's argument that it does not have to trade territory at the table because the front is not frozen. The 250 prisoners are also, bluntly, exchange fund.

What to Watch

Vivaldi is named for the composer of the Four Seasons, and Biletskyi has hinted the metaphor is not finished. Watch for independent geolocation of Nove, Ridkodub and Katerynivka from the usual mapping projects to confirm the claimed lines. Watch whether Russia sends Rubicon or another premier drone formation back to Lyman to stabilize the sector, and whether the recaptured ground holds once Russian glide bombs shift onto it. And watch the POW channel: 250 captured in one phase is the kind of number that moves exchange negotiations.

The channel will track season four from the first bar. For the live feed of strikes, maps and sourced claims as they land, follow us at t.me/TheLeaflet.

Read next: Russian Air Force losses 2026: what is left, base by base, and the bombers Russia cannot replace, and the Ukraine US drone deal is ready: Kyiv's interceptors already defended American bases from Iran.

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Deception cells, robot breaching assaults, mass surrenders: which piece of Operation Vivaldi should the channel take apart in a full deep dive? Drop it in the comments, or tell the channel what to cover next.

Sources

Kyiv Independent (Sep 28, 2026), Kyiv Post (Sep 28, 2026), United24 Media (Sep 28, 2026), Ukrinform (Sep 28, 2026), ArmyInform (Sep 16 and Sep 28, 2026), Al Jazeera (Sep 28, 2026). Photos: ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0, and Third Army Corps via ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0.