800km² liberated now as Ukrainians keep pushing Russians back.

💎 Help us expand the coverage! Subscription starts from just $4.99! Get 50% OFF full access to the map + exclusive strategic updates: https://www.rfunews.com/pricing Today, the most insane news is coming from the Liman direction.  Recent reports from Ukrainian soldiers on the ground show that after clearing the forest south of Liman, Ukrainians just kept advancing and pushing Russians further back. Taking advantage of their newly captured territory, Ukrainians crossed over the river into the rear of the Russian advance on Sloviansk and collapsed it completely.  For several months, Russians had been achieving a slow but gradual advance toward the Ukrainian city of Sloviansk through their infiltration tactics. The absence of any engineering fortifications such as deep anti-tank ditches or lines of razorwire meant that Russian infiltrators were never funneled into concentrated kill zones for Ukrainian defenders to eliminate. While Russians suffered notable losses during their advance, they had been successfully able to push Ukrainian lines back to the town of Mykolaivka. This is where Ukrainian engineering fortifications began again, and Russian forces were already launching their first probing assaults by the time Operation Vivaldi kicked into gear at Liman.  However, this Russian push was fully dependent on their flanks being secured by the Serebryanski forest and the Donets River to the north, where Russian forces had been attempting to infiltrate into Liman. As Russian lines broke at Liman, so did the flank of the Russian force grouping advancing on Ukraine’s fortress belt. The biggest problem for Russians then became clear, as their denial about the severity of Ukrainian advances and lost territory left the Russian force grouping to the south completely unaware of the new threat on their flanks.  Ukrainians immediately took advantage, and dedicated a good number of forces to crossing the river and engaging with the Russian forces in the rear of the Sloviansk offensive. Notably, these Russian forces included drone operators trained by the infamous Rubicon drone brigade, who had been deployed to the sector to train new Russian drone pilots, and are credited for a big portion of the success that Russians have experienced here. Ukrainians themselves positioned their own drone units directly on the frontline, allowing FPV kamikaze and bomber drones to strike deep into the Russian lines and putting Russians under heavy pressure.  As Ukrainian assaults pinned down Russian fire and drone support units, Ukrainians initiated sector-wide counterattacks from the direction of Mykolaivka. These forces moved quickly to maintain their shock advantage, surrounding Russian forces before penetrating rapidly and deeply into Russian lines. As the Ukrainian force grouping from Mykolaivka advanced, they linked up with assault units that had crossed the river from Liman before continuing the advance. Ukrainian soldiers report that Russians had poorly consolidated their positions here in their hurry to advance. This allowed Ukrainian counterattacks to snowball to the point that Ukrainians began fully overrunning Russian drone pilots, frontline logistics depots, and low-level Russian command centers. As a result, Ukrainians captured an additional two hundred square kilometers south of the forest, and there is no report yet of the advance coming to a halt.  Overall, the recent Ukrainian counterattacks into the Serebryanski forest and the Russian advance east of Mykolaivka have brought the total amount of liberated Ukrainian territory to a staggering eight hundred square kilometers. At this point, Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi is turning from operational counterattacks to a full-blown sector-wide counteroffensive. Undoing over one-and-a-half years of Russian gains along a sixty-kilometer-wide frontline, and collapsing the Russian advance on one of the largest Ukrainian fortress cities left in Donbas.