Ukraine touts gains from Operation Vivaldi as Russia claims major encirclements. What’s really happening on the battlefield?

Russian and Ukrainian forces continue fighting around the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk urban area, with both sides issuing public-relations-heavy claims timed to coincide with Trump-mediated negotiations. Russia says it is destroying encircled Ukrainian groupings, though it has not actually encircled any major force, while Ukraine claims to be on the third phase of ‘Operation Vivaldi’ near Lyman even as open-source video shows it still working through the first line of Russian defense.

Vladimir Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club that Ukraine and Europe privately expect to hold Donbas only another year and a half to two years, and that Russia will take it ‘much sooner’ as the offensive accelerates. The actual record shows Russia captured Pokrovsk, Siversk, and Kostiantynivka over the past roughly eighteen months but then failed for nine months to break into the cities shielding Kramatorsk from the south, northeast, and southwest, losing ground around Lyman in the process.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.