Operation Vivaldi's 3rd Phase Ends With Even More Ukrainian Gains

Operation Vivaldi has become one of the most productive and strategically beneficial offensives of the war. 

Not only has it captured significant amounts of territory, but it has resulted in massive Russian casualties, disrupted and materially delayed the Kremlin's hopes for an attack on Ukraine's Fortress Belt and has further undermined Putin's claims of inevitability. And the counteroffensive has only completed three of its four planned phases. JL

Sam Rivera reports in Infohandle:

Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps closed what it called the third “season” of Operation Vivaldi, reporting that its troops had cleared five settlements north of Lyman, regained 51 square kilometers of ground, and taken more than 250 Russian soldiers prisoner in a single operational burst, marking the first public accounting of the phase. The 51-square-kilometer gain brings the operation’s officially acknowledged total to 176 square kilometers since commanders named Vivaldi on September 15, after earlier phases on September 20 freed Shandryholove and Derylove. For Kyiv, the combination of territorial gain, large prisoner hauls, and public messaging serves both the battlefield and diplomatic audiences 

Positions In Russia's Kursk Oblast Still Held By Ukraine, To Kremlin's Consternation

Ukrainian forces continue to hold positions inside Russia's Kursk oblast more than a year after the Kremlin reported the area 'cleared.' 

The Ukrainians maintain troops there both to force Russia to deploy units to keep them in check, meaning they cannot be sent elsewhere, but also as a potential jumping off point for opportunistic raids and surveillance missions. The point is to keep the Russians on edge in as many sectors as possible. JL

Oleksandr Shumilin reports in Ukraine Pravda:

Ukrainian soldiers continue to hold positions in Russia's Kursk Oblast, controlling several forest areas. a year ago, the Russians were "more aggressive" and sought to dislodge these positions. "But after losing a large number of personnel there, they abandoned this objective." From a military point of view, they probably did the right thing: why fight over a couple of kilometres of their own territory that essentially change nothing?" The Russians are trying to look for weak points, but without success. Their main objective is the city of Sumy."

1960s Soviet Armor Has Been Turned Into Lethal Threat By Ukraine

In addition to innovating and creating new weapons and tactics, the Ukrainians have demonstrated that they are masters at making do with what is at hand.

The use of antiquated Soviet era armored personnel carriers and huge rolling explosive devices and of 1960s era T-62 tanks as mobile artillery firing from a distance has turned large hunks of metal once considered little better than scrap into lethal weapons. JL

Euromaidan Press reports:

Bulgaria  gave Ukraine 110 BTR-60 armored personnel carriers. They are 1960s vehicles, too thinly armored to carry infantry near a front patrolled by drones. So Ukraine's 3rd Corps found another use for them during Operation Vivaldi. Fill it with anti-tank mines, rig it for remote control, drive it at a Russian bunker, and set it off. Packing dozens of TM-62 anti-tank mines, the speedy BTR-60s become vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs. (Similarly) Ukrainian units have operated at least 45 T-62Ms that Ukrainian troops captured. The 40-ton, four-person T-62M  is still a vehicle of the early Cold War, (but) these days, many tanks on both sides function as mobile artillery, angling their guns high to fire a few rounds at targets kilometers away. They rarely close with the enemy. The threat from tiny explosive drones has pushed armor back from the gray zone, and at that distance a T-62M is not much less effective than a far more precious Leopard 2, or M-1.

The Reason Hundreds of Russian Troops Are Surrendering In Operation Vivaldi

When large numbers of an enemy force surrender, including entire units, rather than fight on, it is a sign of a deeper malaise. The Kremlin's forces spent 18 months in brutal combat to create the Lyman salient that Ukrainian troops began hacking away at over a few months and have now almost eliminatd in a period of weeks.

This has a devastating effect on morale, on unit cohesion and on the belief that a soldier's superiors know what they are doing. It also demonstrates that the Ukrainians may now be betters soldiers and a more effective army. This is not to suggest that the Russian army in Ukraine is about to collapse, but it does raise questions about what they are capable of accomplishing on the battlefield now and in the near future. JL

RFU News reports:

The scale of Russia’s defeat around Liman is becoming clearer, as Ukraine’s 3rd Corps has confirmed Russian casualties during the third phase of Operation Vivaldi reached more than 2,000, while more than 250 Russian soldiers were captured. Entire Russian units surrendered, including officers, drone operators, and artillerymen, demonstrating Russia committed substantial forces to defend the bridgehead. The psychological consequences are even more devastating as Russian forces spent 18 months grinding toward Liman, suffering enormous casualties to seize territory that Ukrainian forces have torn away in a matter of weeks. Watching those gains disappear undermines troops confidence for Russians withdrawing, isolated or surrounded. Entire Russian groups surrendered as continued resistance was judged pointless. Vivaldi represents something harder to replace than territory: Russian confidence that those previous sacrifices produced lasting gains.

How Investors Will Know When the AI Boom Is Ending

Follow the money, or more specifically, the funding gap. That is the point at which hot startups still need fresh capital, but the market is no longer willing to indulge the risk. 

The photo to the right if of a sock puppet, which was the mascot of Pets.com, a company which became emblematic of the dotcom bust. It was able to keep raising money even though its cost of marketing and logistics far outweighed the prices it was able to charge for the products it was selling. Until the market crashed, investors said no mas, and the company filed for bankruptcy. It was reported yesterday in Anthropic's IPO prospectus that its revenues were $4,6 billion, but that its net loss is approximately $42 billion and it still has plans to spend $118 billion on new infrastructure and related expenses in the coming year. And that it is expecting to go public at a valuation of $2 trillion. Sock puppet redux? You decide. JL

Jonathan Weil reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Four years after the launch of ChatGPT, the AI boom is still going. Booms need continuous capital to perpetuate themselves. History shows they can start turning into busts the moment the window to raise new capital closes. That is where its biggest vulnerability lies. Funding gap became part of the financial lexicon in 2000, as the dot-com bubble was starting to deflate. A funding gap means a company still needs investors to keep supplying fresh cash even if the chance to raise new money has vanished. One poster child was Pets.com. It was able to keep raising cash from investors. Then the market crashed and the company shut down in November 2000. Similar concerns made a comeback during the financial crisis in 2007. If OpenAI can rely on Nvidia to keep funding it, that helps hold AI together in the hope that one day it can become self-sustaining. But if the capital window narrows enough to create a funding gap, the momentum behind AI could quickly reverse.decrease; down pointing triangle to keep funding it, that helps hold the AI ecosystem together in the hope that one day it can become self-sustaining. OpenAI’s ability to raise new money also means a company like Oracle 

A Russian Truck Led Ukraine Tracking Drones To Hit Huliapole Ammo Depot

Patience. 

That virtue is increasingly leading Ukrainian forces to much bigger targets in Russian occupied lands, such as this one in the Huliapole sector. JL

Shawn Reed reports in Medium:

A Russian ammunition truck passing through Huliaipole was the target to which they could draw their attention to locate a much bigger ammunition target. Ukrainian forces followed it to a hidden hangar, patiently waited for the vehicle to get to the storage position and then killed it using one FPV drone.  The strike triggered the detonation of about 60 152 mm artillery shells. The whole operation lasted less than three and a half hours from the time of detection to the time of the strike.

3rd Ukraine Corps Flexibility, Reshaping Battlefield Led To Lyman Success

Months before Ukraine's 3rd Corps' Operation Vivaldi decimated the Russian armies holding the Lyman sector, it had to completely reorganize; identifying strengths and weaknesses, replacing subordinate commanders, improving the NCOs, vetting and then adapting to the new technologies that would become part of its legend. 

And that ability to think strategically, redefine the components of leadership needed for the 2026 battlefield and the hard work of then implementing that new vision is what led to its current success .JL

Howard Altman reports in The War Zone:

The success of Vivaldi began long before any troop movements, changing the culture from a rigid Soviet-era model, with a cumbersome chain of command, to a modern, flexible one better suited for the current conflict. (We) must be responsible for the cycle, from training a soldier to the result on the battlefield. "In some cases that meant replacing a commander. In others it meant restructuring staff or strengthening the NCO chain. We had to build processes. When the corps took over its sector, our first task was not an offensive, we had to stabilize. We had to stockpile ammunition, drones and other resources, understand the enemy, and plan the next step. Only after that could we move forward.” By June, the corps was able to secure the front “in the sector from Borova to Lyman. You cannot plan a complex operation if you don’t know where your forward edge will be tomorrow. So the first phase of ‘Vivaldi’ was creating conditions that made an advance possible.”