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Ukraine’s Third Army Corps announced on 14 October that the autumn phase of what it called Operation Vivaldi had concluded successfully, with Ukrainian forces recovering 277 square kilometres of territory and 16 populated settlements from Russian control. The claim, reported by Uzbek political analyst Kamoliddin Rabbimov in commentary published on 21 October, comes as fighting around the city of Liman in the Donbas region continues to draw the heaviest concentration of forces on either side.
The recaptured settlements carry particular significance, Rabbimov argued, because Ukraine has achieved them under conditions of acute strain — exhausted manpower, limited military resources and persistent uncertainty over continued United States assistance. That Ukrainian forces can still claw back ground in such circumstances, he said, underscores how neither side has been able to secure a decisive advantage along the front line.
Russia has formally incorporated four Ukrainian regions into its constitution, but Rabbimov noted that not all territory declared Russian on paper is actually under Moscow’s control. President Vladimir Putin’s stated core condition for ending the war remains the Donbas: Russia must either seize it outright or Ukraine must cede it. Kyiv has categorically refused, committing its available forces and resources to holding and contesting that front.
Disputed claims around Liman and Dobropillya
A second analyst, Abduvali Soyibnazarov, pushed back on the framing of Ukrainian gains near Liman. He acknowledged that Ukrainian forces may have seized forested areas on the city’s outskirts by concentrating significant Donbas-based units in that direction, but argued that the main urban area of Liman remains under Russian control. He stopped short of endorsing the broader claim that the city had changed hands.
Soyibnazarov was equally sceptical of Russian assertions. A report attributed to Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, presented to Putin, stated that Russian forces had captured Dobropillya — a strategically significant town on the border between the Donbas and Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Soyibnazarov described that claim as doubtful, noting that Russian military bloggers and pro-war commentators known as Z-bloggers have themselves previously challenged the accuracy of official battlefield announcements.
Escalation beyond the front line
With neither side able to achieve a breakthrough along the contact line, Rabbimov identified a pattern that has become central to how both belligerents are now prosecuting the war: striking targets well behind the front in order to achieve through economic and psychological pressure what cannot be won in direct combat.
Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil facilities and data centres. Russia has continued striking Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, with some attacks directed at infrastructure associated with nuclear power stations. Rabbimov described this mutual rear-area bombardment as an attempt to erode the opponent’s economic capacity, stoke domestic discontent and generate political pressure on rival governments — forcing concessions that battlefield results alone have not produced.
He acknowledged this is not a novel feature of warfare, but argued it has become a defining characteristic of the current escalatory phase, in which front-line stagnation pushes both sides to seek leverage through civilian and industrial targets rather than territorial conquest.
The competing and unverified claims from both governments illustrate a broader problem that has persisted throughout the conflict: the fog of war is compounded by deliberate information management on both sides, making independent verification of battlefield developments exceptionally difficult in real time.