The New Voice of Ukraine reports:
Ukraine's 60th Mechanized Brigade was defending positions on the Lyman front long before Operation Vivaldi began. (But) it's path to the counteroffensive (included) a corruption scandal, retreat from several positions, a transfer to the 3rd Corps and overhaul of its command. In 2025 "key officers had gone AWOL. The number of soldiers going AWOL was catastrophic. And all this was happening while the enemy was launching massive assaults towards Lyman. The situation was extremely difficult, worse than the public knew. Then we started making changes. Experienced officers and soldiers from the 3rd Assault Brigade transferred to the 60th Brigade in fall 2025. Russian commanders failed to adapt to the changes taking place within Ukrainian units in the sector. Within a year, the brigade went from struggling to hold its positions to taking part in one of Ukraine's most successful offensives.
Ukraine's 60th Separate Mechanized Inhulets Brigade was defending positions on the Lyman front long before Operation Vivaldi began. Its path to the counteroffensive was far from straightforward: a corruption scandal, the loss of several positions, a transfer to the Third Army Corps and a sweeping overhaul of its command structure.
Within a year, the brigade went from struggling to hold its positions to taking part in one of the Ukrainian military's most successful operations of 2026.
NV journalist Serhii Okuniev spoke with one of the brigade's battalion commanders and several Ukrainian Ground Forces officers to understand how the transformation took place.
'Retreat was considered normal': What happened near Lyman before the Third Army Corps was formed
In fall 2022, Ukrainian troops launched the Kharkiv counteroffensive, one of the largest and most successful operations of the war. While Russian forces were focused on Izium and Kupyansk, Ukraine's Defense Forces also attacked in Donetsk Oblast, advancing toward the city of Lyman. The offensive proved highly successful, with disoriented Russian forces losing vast areas of territory.
Lyman, often called the northern gateway to Donetsk Oblast, was officially liberated on Oct. 1–2, 2022. Ukrainian forces not only recaptured the city but also pushed Russian troops nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles) farther east.
The front line subsequently stabilized, with much of the fighting concentrated in the Serebrianskyi Forest, which Ukrainian forces held for several years.
In spring 2024, Russian troops intensified their assaults north of Lyman, attempting to reach the Zherebets River near the villages of Terny and Yampolivka. Capturing the area could have jeopardized a substantial stretch of Ukrainian defenses.
The 60th Mechanized Brigade was deployed to the Lyman front around that time.
Ukrainian forces managed to hold back the Russian assaults for months, but the situation began deteriorating in 2025. In January, Russian troops crossed the Zherebets River, captured Terny and established a bridgehead on its western bank.
From then on, the Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState recorded new Russian advances almost every week as Moscow's forces expanded their control west of the river.
Ukrainian troops continued retreating throughout 2025. Eventually, Russian forces created a salient extending nearly 17 kilometers (10.6 miles) into Ukrainian positions.
According to DeepState, Russia captured approximately 300 square kilometers (116 square miles), an area larger than the city of Luhansk.
At the same time, Russian forces advanced toward Lyman itself. By fall 2025, small Russian groups were infiltrating the city, and some Russian propaganda outlets even announced that Lyman had been recaptured.
"The situation really was extremely difficult. You could even say that things in Lyman itself were worse than the public knew," a Ukrainian Ground Forces source told NV on condition of anonymity.
"Senior commanders were being told that the enemy had been stopped, that these were just minor infiltrations. But in private conversations, the 60th Brigade's command would say, 'Yes, we're retreating. Who isn't retreating these days?' It was considered normal."
A revolution inside the brigade: How the Third Army Corps took over
Ukraine began restructuring its military into corps in 2025. The idea was to establish formations responsible for specific sectors of the front, each with a permanent group of brigades under its command.
In practice, problems emerged almost immediately. Newly established corps were assigned brigades scattered across different fronts.
A corps responsible for a sector in Donetsk Oblast, for example, could have subordinate brigades deployed in Kharkiv or Zaporizhzhya oblasts or elsewhere.
The Third Army Corps was the only formation to take a fundamentally different approach.
Rather than selecting the strongest brigades, it assumed command of units already operating in its assigned sector.
This meant the corps could immediately concentrate its forces where they were needed. But it also inherited troubled brigades that required extensive changes.
The corps audited the 60th Separate Mechanized Inhulets Brigade, which was responsible for defending the area around Lyman.
In October 2025, as the situation approached a critical point, the brigade commander was replaced. Personnel changes subsequently spread through brigade headquarters, battalions and other units.
"I had spent my entire military career in the Third Assault Brigade, and frankly, at first I couldn't even understand how things like this could happen in a brigade," one corps officer told NV.
"I was used to something completely different. Imagine this: several key officers from battalion headquarters, even brigade headquarters, had gone AWOL. The number of soldiers going AWOL was catastrophic. Battalion manning levels were critically low. The drone situation was terrible."
The officer said some companies in the Third Assault Brigade had larger drone capabilities than the entire 60th Brigade.
"And all this was happening while the enemy was launching massive assaults north of Lyman and toward the city itself," he added.
In January 2026, several months after his dismissal, the brigade's former commander, Col. Andrii Borodin, was arrested on allegations of embezzlement involving drone procurement.
Third Army Corps commander Andrii Biletskyi later publicly acknowledged the serious problems that had existed in the brigade before its leadership was replaced.
'Now I have nowhere to put new recruits': How the brigade changed and went on the offensive
Dozens of experienced officers and enlisted soldiers from the Third Assault Brigade transferred to the 60th Brigade in fall 2025.
The reinforcement team was tasked with urgently addressing the brigade's problems and stabilizing its section of the front.
"When I first arrived at the command post, I was surprised, to put it mildly," said the commander of the 60th Brigade's 1st Battalion, who uses the call sign Judo.
"The atmosphere wasn't focused on getting results at all. Everyone was afraid to say anything unnecessary. 'Sir, permission to go to the bathroom?' That's not discipline. That's people being intimidated."
Judo said simply replacing personnel would not have solved the problem.
"We had to rebuild the system so that the same people could perform effectively. The measure of their performance shouldn't be how quickly someone stands up when I enter the room, how they look at me or anything like that. What matters is whether they accomplish real tasks effectively."
Judo is a young officer who worked his way up from fighting in trenches and participating in assaults to commanding a battalion.
His battalion was responsible for the largest defensive sector in the brigade, and Russian forces concentrated their heaviest attacks against its positions in fall and winter 2025–2026.
"They had armored vehicles and very large numbers of assault troops," Judo said.
"Last fall, the enemy tried to break through to Drobysheve with a large mechanized column, and they already had some of the conditions needed for that attempt to succeed. Their objective was essentially to bypass Lyman and our defensive lines, then attack from the flanks and even from behind."
According to Judo, however, Russian commanders failed to adapt to the changes taking place within Ukrainian units in the sector.
The Third Army Corps reorganized the defenses, Russian losses increased significantly, but Moscow's forces continued using the same tactics.
"They had been advancing before. Then we started making changes, and our effectiveness improved," Judo said.
"They didn't pay attention. They kept coming at us in crowds, just as they had before. At some point, it became clear that they weren't just losing the initiative. They were losing their reserves, too."
"I think that was when Andrii Biletskyi realized we could completely turn the situation around on this front."
By early spring 2026, the number of soldiers going AWOL from the brigade had fallen severalfold. Some service members who had deserted under the previous command began returning.
The brigade also overhauled its training system for soldiers with combat experience, while the corps' recruitment efforts began bringing in reinforcements.
"When the previous leadership was removed, it became clear that the brigade wasn't really set up to receive new personnel," another Ukrainian Ground Forces source told NV.
"The manpower situation was almost critical, yet soldiers arriving at the brigade were simply left on their own."
Some waited for weeks without knowing their assignments, responsibilities, units or commanders, the source said. That contributed to newly arrived soldiers going AWOL.
The situation has since changed dramatically, according to Judo.
"Now I have a problem: I have nowhere to put new people. There are volunteers who want to join, but we're running out of positions."
During winter 2026, the Third Army Corps first significantly slowed Russian advances on the Lyman front and then stopped them entirely.
That created the conditions for Operation Vivaldi. The 60th Brigade, which had faced serious internal problems just a year earlier, also went on the offensive.
"My battalion is taking part in offensive operations in our sector," Judo said.
"If you read the old Soviet textbooks, the attacking side is supposedly supposed to have three or five times as many troops as the defenders. But warfare has completely changed. Nobody sends hundreds of people running across a field shouting 'Hurrah!' anymore."
"Our offensive operations were based on two things: concealment and technology."
Soon after the Ukrainian advances on the Lyman front became apparent, Russian propaganda outlets and several prominent pro-Kremlin commentators began alleging catastrophic losses among the Ukrainian units involved in Operation Vivaldi.
Judo said his battalion's casualties had actually decreased during the offensive.
"You have to understand what an assault means," he said.
"Of course, if you're talking about a frontal attack with 10 armored vehicles in broad daylight, without preparation, casualties will be high."
"In our case, we were constantly moving. The enemy was disoriented. They had to abandon their drone operators' positions and move them deeper into the rear. Their mortar and automatic grenade launcher fire systems were disrupted. All of that affected our casualties."
He described one operation in which two soldiers from the 60th Brigade covertly took up a position along a Russian logistics route.
Over several days, the two soldiers killed approximately 20 Russian troops before withdrawing for rotation, according to Judo.
The Russian troops apparently struggled to understand what was happening. According to intercepted communications, Russian commanders reported losing contact with their soldiers in an entirely different sector from where they had been killed.
Russian forces also remained uncertain about the actual extent of Ukraine's advances for a considerable period.
In some areas, they underestimated the Ukrainian gains. Elsewhere, they exaggerated them.
NV has obtained information indicating that some Russian troops abandoned their positions, left heavy weapons behind and retreated from sectors where Ukrainian forces had not conducted any assault operations.
"We're suffering incomparably fewer casualties than the enemy," Judo said.
"The difference is so large that it's not even easy to calculate everything. There were weeks when the casualty ratio was one to 20. I'm talking specifically about our battalion."
These casualty figures are the battalion commander's assessment and have not been independently verified.
Judo said Ukrainian gains north of Lyman had already improved the security situation in the city.
Third Army Corps commander Biletskyi has made a similar assessment.
According to Biletskyi, Russia had planned to create two major pincers in northern and southern Donetsk Oblast, threatening Ukrainian positions not only at the tactical level but potentially at the strategic level as well.
The northern pincer has now been completely broken, the corps commander said.
Not all the results of Operation Vivaldi have yet been made public.
0 comments:
Post a Comment