Ukraine seizes back initiative near Lyman, disrupts Russia’s Donbas plans

Ukrainian forces have successfully resisted the Russian army from late 2025 through all of 2026. Since March, Ukraine has reduced Russia’s net territorial gains almost to zero and carried out successful counteroffensives in the Kupyansk, Oleksandrivka, and Lyman sectors.

According to the think tank, those operations prevented Russian troops from breaking into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, allowed Ukraine to regain lost positions in Kupyansk and its surrounding area, and destroyed a major Russian salient near Lyman that had threatened Slovyansk and other fortified cities in Donetsk Oblast.

ISW highlighted the Lyman operation in particular, saying it enabled Ukrainian forces over recent months to derail Russian plans to surround key Donbas cities from two directions — from Lyman and Dobropillya.

The report said the Russian military command will now likely have to revise its operational plans on the southern and northern flanks of the so-called fortress belt, especially if Ukrainian forces are able to fully push Russian troops back to the Zherebets River and establish a stable defensive line there.

Russia may choose to redeploy surviving units from the Lyman area to other sectors of the front, ISW suggested.

An alternative possibility would be for Moscow to double down on efforts to seize Lyman and revive plans to encircle key cities in Donetsk Oblast from the north. But ISW noted that Russian forces have failed to take Lyman since the fall of 2022, and after what it described as a dramatic defeat in that direction, they are unlikely to be able to use reinforcements to conduct successful large-scale infantry or mechanized assaults in the near future.

The report also said that, because of Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes, Russian commanders are reportedly pressuring President Vladimir Putin to launch a large-scale conscription campaign to retain the initiative. It remains unclear, ISW added, how such a move would affect the battlefield dynamic given Ukraine’s current advantages.

Ukraine’s offensive operation near Lyman

On Sept. 8, reports said Ukraine had launched its counteroffensive operation near Lyman in Donetsk Oblast as early as the beginning of May. According to OSINT analyst Clément Molin, the operation remained secret for four months.

He said Ukrainian forces liberated a series of villages and then completely eliminated the Russian salient, pushing invading forces back across the Zherebets River.

Foreign OSINT analysts also said the Defense Forces had liberated “hundreds of kilometers of territory” on the Lyman front.

In its Sept. 9 report, ISW noted that Russian military bloggers had acknowledged Ukrainian counterattacks near Lyman and were increasingly criticizing the widespread Russian military practice of providing false information about the situation at the front.