Two articles published by the Czech outlet on 16 October 2026 describe Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi near Lyman as a costly failure and attack the competence of the country’s military leadership. Their account relies on Russian media and treats reported Ukrainian losses as proof that the operation achieved little.
That version is disputed by the Ukrainian Third Army Corps, the open-source project DeepState, the US-based Institute for the Study of War and Russian military bloggers. Their accounts point to a different question: not whether Ukraine suffered losses, but whether Russian forces achieved their wider aim of outflanking Ukrainian defences and threatening the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area.
A Russian-source account of defeat
One article says Ukrainian counter-attacks “at any cost” have only increased the country’s already “enormous” losses. It also accuses Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi of making wrong decisions and failing to achieve significant results at the front.
A second article presents the alleged conclusion of Operation Vivaldi as the moment when Russian forces moved on to the offensive. It says the operation was intended to remove the threat of a Russian encirclement of the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration from the north, but that Ukrainian units met defensive positions, including near the Zherebets River, and suffered heavy losses.
Both pieces cite Russian outlets including and Tsargrad. The claims about Ukrainian casualties and the alleged incompetence of the command are not supported in the cited material by an independent casualty assessment. They should therefore be treated as a Russian-source interpretation of the fighting, rather than an independent verification of events.
The articles can be read here: the report on General Drapatyi and the article on the end of Operation Vivaldi.
What Vivaldi was designed to prevent
The operation began in early September 2026 on the Lyman axis under the command of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps. Its purpose went beyond taking isolated positions. Ukrainian forces sought to weaken Russia’s offensive potential, stop Russian troops from bypassing the defence from the flanks and remove the threat of an encirclement of Lyman.
The operation also had wider implications for the defence of the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration. A successful Russian flanking movement could have increased pressure on Ukrainian defensive lines and supply routes while opening a route towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
During September and October, Ukrainian forces reported several stages of the operation and the recovery of control over settlements and sections of terrain. On 14 October, Brigadier General Andriy Biletskyi, commander of the Third Army Corps, announced the completion of the fourth stage.
According to the corps’ account, Russian forces failed to outflank the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration or trap it in a pincer movement. Ukrainian units also protected the Kharkiv–Sloviansk road and disrupted the advance of Russia’s “West” grouping.
The corps said Ukrainian troops had regained control of 16 settlements and 277 square kilometres. It put Russian losses during the operation at more than 8,000 personnel. Those figures come from the Ukrainian side and have not been independently verified, but they describe a substantially different outcome from a sequence of pointless attacks that achieved nothing.
The challenge to the failure narrative does not rest solely on Ukrainian statements. DeepState, which tracks front-line changes using publicly available information, recorded developments in the area. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that the operation had operational consequences in northern Donetsk region and western Luhansk region. Russian military bloggers also reported changes in the sector.
In the ISW assessment, the Ukrainian action complicated Russian attempts to advance towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and affected neighbouring sectors north and south of Lyman, including the direction of Borova in Kharkiv region. That does not show that every Ukrainian decision was successful or that the operation came without serious losses. It does, however, contradict the categorical claim that the campaign achieved nothing.
Why casualty figures do not settle the argument
uses the language of “enormous” Ukrainian losses to support its wider accusation against the military command. Yet the articles do not provide an independent accounting of Ukrainian dead and wounded, nor do they establish a reliable comparison with Russian losses.
Figures released by the parties to the war also require caution. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that the Russian army is currently suffering about 43,000 dead and seriously wounded each month. He has also cited a ratio of seven to 10 Russian soldiers killed for every Ukrainian soldier killed. In September, Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Marshal Richard Knighton, said, citing British intelligence, that Russian losses since February 2022 had exceeded 500,000 personnel.
These estimates are relevant to the debate over the balance of the war, but their precise accuracy cannot be established fully from public information. They do not prove that Ukrainian losses are minor, nor that every decision by Ukraine’s commanders was sound. They do show why a general reference to “huge losses” is insufficient to prove that an entire operation was futile or that its leadership was systematically incompetent.
The more useful measure is whether Russia achieved its operational objectives. If the Russian plan involved outflanking Ukrainian defences, increasing pressure on Lyman and threatening the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area, then the failure to complete that manoeuvre is a central part of the military balance. An operation can impose a heavy human cost while still blocking a larger and more dangerous enemy movement.
The political work of blaming commanders
The portrayal of Ukrainian generals as fundamentally incapable is a recurring feature of Russian wartime messaging. Ukrainian gains are minimised, while losses and local setbacks are presented as the direct result of personal errors by commanders. When Russian forces fail to achieve their stated objectives, attention shifts from the outcome of the Russian operation to the supposed incompetence of the opposing leadership.
Relaying that account through a European outlet gives it an audience beyond Russia. Claims about senseless counter-attacks, incompetent generals and disproportionate Ukrainian losses can encourage doubts about the effectiveness of Ukraine’s armed forces and the value of continued Western support. But citing Russian media does not turn those sources into independent confirmation of casualty figures or battlefield developments.
The broader claim of structural Ukrainian incompetence also sits uneasily with assessments from Western military research institutions. The British Royal United Services Institute has highlighted the ability of Ukrainian units to adapt to modern combat through new forms of combined-arms warfare, wider use of drones and improved systems for striking Russian forces both at the front and in depth.
Ukraine is also expanding production of FPV drones, attack drones and unmanned ground vehicles. Such platforms are being used not only for strikes but also for logistics and resupply. This adaptation does not mean Ukrainian operations are flawless, erase battlefield errors or reduce the human cost of the war. It does make a simple portrait of an army sustained only by reckless decisions difficult to reconcile with the available evidence.
Operation Vivaldi has consequently become a contest over interpretation as well as a fight around Lyman. The Russian-source narrative describes a bloody failure; Ukrainian reporting and several military analyses point instead to regained territory and the disruption of a Russian encirclement plan. The substantive question is concrete: during the phase completed in mid-October, did Russian forces manage to close the pincer around the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk agglomeration? The available accounts indicate that they did not.
