More Important Than Territory, Ukraine Is Taking the Battlefield Initiative

In Lyman, Kharkiv, Zhaporizhzhia, Pokrovsk and other points along the front Ukrainian forces have taken the initiative, meaning that the Russians are having to respond to their moves rather than, as has been true for much of the war since the invasion, that Ukraine has had to respond to them. 

This means Ukraine can set the time, place and nature of the fighting, which puts the Kremlin at a disadvantage. JL

Wes O'Donnell reports in Medium:

Initiative doesn’t mean attacking constantly, having more troops, or advancing everywhere at once. An army has the initiative when its actions force the opposing commander to change plans. If I attack somewhere and you have to move your reserve there, I’ve influenced your next decision. If I threaten your flank and you have to pause your offensive to protect it, I’ve gained something even if I capture very little territory. If I destroy a salient you spent six months building and force you to redesign the next phase of your campaign, the map may barely change while the operational situation changes significantly. That’s initiative.

For the past four plus years of war in Ukraine, every euphoric moment for Ukraine supporters came when Ukraine “seized the initiative.”

But what does that word mean? Initiative?

In military terms, the ability to make the enemy respond to your actions instead of constantly responding to theirs.

For instance, take the Kharkiv counteroffensive in September 2022, also known as Ukraine’s “Thunder Run.” Ukraine concealed the concentration of forces in northeastern Ukraine while publicly emphasizing its planned Kherson offensive. Then Ukrainian mechanized formations punched through thin Russian defenses around Balakliia and raced through the rear.

The operation liberated roughly 6,000 square kilometers in about 11 days!

Or take Kursk in August of 2024.

Ukraine crossed the international border on August 6 in a surprise mechanized operation that penetrated multiple Russian defensive lines. Within days Ukrainian forces were operating dozens of kilometers inside Russia and eventually claimed control of more than 1,000 square kilometers.

Moscow had to divert resources, reinforce the border, evacuate civilians, construct new defenses, and eventually assemble a major force to push Ukraine back… Including the introduction of North Korean soldiers.

Now, ISW, in its September 12 assessment argues that Ukrainian forces have successfully contested Russian initiative at both the operational and strategic levels since late 2025 and throughout 2026.

And here’s the BIG news: Russia has achieved almost no net territorial gains since March 2026.

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ISW

I don’t want to get too celebratory here. Russia is still attacking. Russia remains dangerous. And there’s still continuing Russian pressure toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, while Ukraine still has serious manpower shortages.

But something subtler is happening…

Moscow increasingly has to react.

Initiative doesn’t mean attacking constantly, having more troops, or advancing everywhere at once. An army has the initiative when its actions force the opposing commander to change plans.

If I attack somewhere and you have to move your reserve there, I’ve influenced your next decision.

If I threaten your flank and you have to pause your offensive to protect it, I’ve gained something even if I capture very little territory.

If I destroy a salient you spent six months building and force you to redesign the next phase of your campaign, the map may barely change while the operational situation changes significantly.

That’s initiative.

At the tactical level, initiative might belong to the squad that forces another squad to react. Like the enemy obscuring their position with smoke, then the wind changes making it less effective, and my squad pushes in to seize the initiative.

Operationally, initiative belongs to the commander who forces the enemy to start moving units, artillery, reserves, and logistics around the theater in response to his actions.

Ulysses S. Grant did exactly this against Robert E. Lee in 1864. Grant didn’t need to win every individual engagement. The Wilderness and Spotsylvania were horrifically expensive battles, and neither produced the sort of clean tactical victory that looks good on a campaign map.

Yet Grant kept moving south and east after each fight instead of retreating north as previous Union commanders often had.

That forced Lee to move again, dig another defensive line, shift reserves, protect another road junction, and anticipate Grant’s next maneuver. Grant was increasingly setting the tempo.

Lee was increasingly solving problems Grant created for him. That’s operational initiative: the enemy may still fight extremely well and even win individual engagements, but he’s spending more of the campaign reacting to your decisions.

Strategic initiative operates one level higher. Grant as general-in-chief, coordinated simultaneous Union offensives across multiple theaters so the Confederacy couldn’t simply move troops from one quiet front to rescue another.

Sherman advanced toward Atlanta, Union forces operated in the Shenandoah Valley, and other formations applied pressure elsewhere while Grant kept Lee pinned in Virginia.

The strategic effect was to influence how the Confederacy allocated manpower, ammunition, rail capacity, reserves, industrial output, and political attention across the entire war.

That’s much closer to what ISW is describing when it says Ukraine is contesting Russian initiative at both the operational and strategic levels. A Ukrainian counterattack around Lyman can create an operational problem by forcing Russia to move troops and reserves. If Ukrainian actions across several fronts, combined with long-range strikes and other pressure, begin forcing Moscow to reconsider mobilization, defense production, force generation, theater priorities, and where scarce air defenses or reserves are positioned, Ukraine is beginning to affect Russian decisions at the strategic level as well.

In grunt terms, the side with initiative is increasingly asking the questions. The other side is spending its time trying to come up with answers.

Lyman shows what changing the equation looks like:

Russia’s salient north of Lyman formed the northern piece of a larger operational concept. Russian forces were attempting to pressure Ukraine’s Donetsk Fortress Belt from multiple directions.

From the east toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

From the south through Kostyantynivka and the Pokrovsk-Dobropillya sector.

And from the north by taking Lyman, crossing the Siverskyi Donets, and eventually pushing around Sloviansk.

The idea was to create pressure from multiple directions and threaten the entire Ukrainian defensive belt. But Ukraine’s counterattacks have largely destroyed the northern salient that Russia needed to pursue that part of the plan.

That’s the key point: A destroyed plan can matter more than liberated territory.

Suppose Ukraine recaptures 50 square kilometers. That’s obviously good news, but the number alone tells us almost nothing about why those 50 square kilometers matter.

Terrain has military value because of what an army can do from it. The Russian salient north of Lyman was in play because it potentially gave Moscow a jumping-off point for further operations against Sloviansk and the Donetsk Fortress Belt.

If Ukrainian troops eliminate that salient, Russia loses far more than dirt.

It loses months of accumulated positioning, prepared routes, forward logistics, reconnaissance infrastructure, potential staging areas, and possibly an entire approach to the next phase of the campaign.

A relatively modest Ukrainian territorial gain can erase months of Russian effort. That’s why counting square kilometers alone can badly misrepresent military progress.

After losing much of the Lyman salient, Russian commanders now have several options, and every one of them sucks.

They can reinforce Lyman, which means pulling troops, artillery, drones, logistics, and command attention away from another part of the front.

They can abandon the northern encirclement plan entirely, write off months of effort, and redesign the campaign around Sloviansk and the Fortress Belt.

They can try to rebuild the salient by attacking prepared Ukrainian positions across terrain where Ukrainian drone-and-infantry integration has already given them fits.

Or Moscow can thin out the sector, accept a new defensive line farther east, and risk Ukraine pushing even deeper.

This is what initiative actually does… It doesn’t necessarily hand you territory; it hands your opponent a menu of bad choices. And every Russian battalion sent to fix the mess around Lyman is a battalion that can’t be used to create a new mess somewhere else.

One final distinction that gets frequently twisted in Ukrainian war reporting: Initiative is different from momentum.

Russia captures three villages and suddenly every headline says Moscow “has momentum.” Ukraine retakes one and apparently the pendulum has swung back the other way.

I think military initiative is a much more useful way to understand what’s actually happening because it asks a different question: who is shaping whose decisions? Russia can continue making tactical advances while losing operational initiative in other sectors. Those conditions aren’t contradictory.

Russian troops could advance around Kostyantynivka tomorrow while commanders elsewhere are simultaneously pulling reserves, artillery, drones, and logistics toward Lyman because Ukrainian forces created a problem they now have to solve.

War doesn’t have a single momentum arrow pointing toward whichever army gained the most ground that week. Different formations can hold the initiative in different sectors, and tactical success in one area can coexist with operational setbacks somewhere else.

What ISW appears to be identifying in 2026 is broader than another temporary swing in battlefield fortunes. Ukraine is increasingly creating dilemmas across several parts of the front at once, forcing Russian commanders to reconsider deployments and campaign plans instead of simply executing the next phase on their own timetable.

That’s a much more meaningful measure of battlefield progress than watching the map change color and declaring that the pendulum has swung again.

Remember, Ukraine is taking the initiative in the middle of a manpower shortage.

They increasingly appear to be getting more battlefield effect from fewer exposed soldiers by integrating drones deeply into maneuver. This is more than just FPVs hunting individual Russian soldiers.

ISR drones identify movement.

Strike drones suppress positions.

Drones interdict supply routes.

Ground robots increasingly move ammunition, plant explosives, and evacuate casualties.

Infantry then operates inside that sensor-and-strike environment to take advantage of gained initiative. Imagine how valuable this knowledge is, that is, how to fight inside this new autonomous battlefield.