Operation Vivaldi Shows Ukraine's Elite Units' Strengths, Russian Adaptive Inability

One of the elements of the success of Ukraine's Operation Vivaldi counteroffensive has been the evidence of preparation and training evident in the planning and execution of the Ukrainian advance.

A number of specialized units have been deployed for this operation and the level of cooperation between advancing infantry and armor with drone units conducting surveillance, electronic warfare counter-drone strikes, FPV assaults on strongpoints as well as resupply to troops demonstrates a degree of expertise and coordination which appears to be beyond the Russians' ability to adapt, given their sclerotic attachment to traditional means. JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

The units involved are the 60th mechanized brigade, the 125th heavy mechanized brigade, the battalion tactical group of the 3rd assault brigade, the 3rd reconnaissance and 25th anti-tank battalions of the corps, the 66th mechanized brigade, the 85th tactical group of the 8th SSO regiment, the Artan special drone unit, and the 10th Dozor border detachment. That shows the preparation the Ukrainians have put into this; a range of specialized units, specially prepared for the operation. And it shows how the Ukrainians have been adapting their forces for the land war. The Ukrainians are advancing and not suffering massive casualties. "A large number of enemy officers were destroyed and a significant number of enemy personnel were taken prisoner. Russian tactics do not change. These are just meat assaults.” Ukraine is taking the initiative with new and better ways of fighting, which keep Ukrainian casualties down and ratchet Russian ones up.

This week, something changed and the Ukrainians started speaking specifically about their operation and even gave it a code name—Operation Vivaldi.

Vivaldi is being conducted, it seems, primarily by the 3rd Army Corps commanded by Gen Andrii Biletskyi. Biletskyi confirmed this publicly on Sept. 15, saying the corps had launched Vivaldi under conditions of "maximum information silence." The name refers somewhat cheekily to Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (shout out to Baroque music). That is because the Ukrainians are saying the operation has four stages—or “seasons” and we are only now in the first stage. Biletskyi also asked the public not to "give away the spoilers" because the operation still requires silence.

There was this excellent story in The Kyiv Independent, which quoted Biletskyi and which provides a good overview of what we know and, crucially, what we do not know about Vivaldi.

Since then there has been more information coming out from Ukrainian sources. Yesterday (September 19) there were some official statements released by the Chief of Staff and Deputy Commander of the Third Army Corps, Petro Horbatenko. You can read much of what he said in this report.

Horbatenko also described an ongoing operation making substantial progress.

“We will continue to make progress in a week. Accordingly, in the near future we will inform you about new details regarding the operation and new results regarding its success….We continue to move. What was announced is one figure, it will increase over time. New data on successes and liberated settlements will come, we just can't reveal and talk about everything yet. The enemy on this section is broken, disorganized. He is trying to transfer special forces units there to close the breakthrough, simply grinding them into "meat", without achieving any success,”

Horbatenko also confirmed that the Ukrainians are still in stage 1 of the four stages of Vivaldi. He, and others, have also spoken about 75 sq kms being liberated.

These latest reports also provided some detailed news about the military units involved, which are units of the 60th separate mechanized brigade, the 125th separate heavy mechanized brigade, the battalion tactical group of the 3rd assault brigade, the 3rd separate reconnaissance and 25th separate anti-tank battalions of the corps, the 66th separate mechanized brigade, the 85th tactical group of the 8th SSO regiment, the Artan special unit of the GUR, and the 10th border detachment "Dozor".

That is important as it shows the preparation the Ukrainians have put into this. This is a range of specialized units, all of which have seemingly been specially prepared for the operation.

And, not to reinforce this point every week, but it shows how the Ukrainians have been adapting their forces for the land war for a long time. In the Kyiv Independent story there was this description of how the Ukrainians are advancing in the modern battlespace and not suffering massive casualties.

Instead, territory is taken by small groups of infantry and assault teams that focus on concealment, while being supported constantly by drones that scan the battlespace, strike enemy targets and shelters, and drop supplies and ammunition to the teams on the ground.

This kind of extremely close and precise action, only possible if highly trained and motivated troops and drone forces can operate extremely well together. This minimizes the amount of time the attacking forces need to spend in the open, allowing them to move swiftly from point to point, take cover, and still be supplied.

It’s exactly what General Havrylov laid out as the intention 9 months ago—when the western media, led by its deeply flawed analytical community, was still saying Ukraine needed to draft more of its young population and send them to the front.

Now, with the Ukrainians keeping a lid on the specifics of the advance. Information about how much territory they have retaken is coming more from Russian sources than Ukrainian. And we need to be very careful with this. Rybar, a Russian source, has the Ukrainians crossing over into Luhansk Oblast.

Ukrainian data also supports the idea that something significant is going on. There has been a notable comments on Russian tactics and casualties as part of the Vivaldi discussion. Deputy Commander of the 3rd Corps, Maksym Zhorin, talked about the lack of adaptation in the Russian military:

“In addition to the advance itself, we can say that during this operation a fairly large number of enemy officers were also destroyed and a fairly significant number of enemy personnel were taken prisoner. Perhaps, in recent years, this is the largest replenishment of the exchange fund that came from the Ukrainian side,”

Horbatenko was even more pithy on Russian losses, saying: “Russian tactics generally do not change. These are just meaty assaults.”

And Ukrainian claims of Russian casualties over the past week (this is for all fronts, not just Vivaldi) have spiked. The Ukrainian General Staff claimed 11,090 Russian personnel losses in the seven daily reports from 14 to 20 September 2026, an average of about 1,584 a day. Here is a breakdown.

This is a crushing casualty rate, btw. If it were maintained for a month (30 days) it would be equal to 47,529. For 31 days we are talking over 49,000.

We must obviously be careful about not over-reacting to this. I dislike it intensely when people talk about a Russian “collapse” which makes it seem like the Ukrainians can start making swift advances. That still seems very unlikely in this battle space. Even large gaps in the line can be closed with drone forces and humans cannot survive for very long out in the open. So please rein such talk in.

However, the reality of this summer’s fighting seems to be this. Ukraine is demonstrating the capacity to take the initiative with new and better ways of fighting, which keep Ukrainian casualties down and ratchet Russian ones up. And the best thing about it is that the USA cannot help the Russians that much at this point—which is a major contrast to the next story.