Thread by @Playfra0

Lyman and the 3rd battle for the city at 5km on the horizon.
Russian 🇷🇺 plans, Ukrainian 🇺🇦 defenses, logistics, and what's next.

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Lyman is a medium-sized town located in the northern corner of Donetsk Oblast' and counted about 20,000 inhabitants in 2022.
Immediately after the start of the invasion, while the Russians were able to advance with almost no resistance in Luhansk and eastern Kharkiv Oblasts, they encountered very strong resistance in Donetsk Oblast' along strong and prepared defensive lines, reinforced for 8 years since 2014.
Nonetheless, after being pushed out of northern Ukraine and having scaled down their plans to capture Ukrainian-controlled Donbas, the Russians immediately recognized the importance of precisely 2 cities to reach their goals: the cities of Lyman and Izyum.
Control over these two cities allowed the Russians to pose an extremely serious threat to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the two "capitals" of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas, from the northeast and northwest.
Old "panic fortifications" built facing westwards from Slovyansk and Kramatorsk can still be easily found to this day, proving this strong problem that the Ukrainians faced.

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In August 2022, in fact, the Ukrainians started a small scale "preparation"counteroffensive south of Izyum, with the likely aim of pushing the Russians back to the Siversky Donets river, to strenghten Donbas' northern flank.
Just a month later, the successful September 2022 counteroffensive started exactly in this general sector, with the aim of reaching the Oskil river to finally secure the Donbas, understanding that a frontal attack was already impossible at this time and that the flanks were their only vulnerability.
Izyum city was recaptured on September 12th with almost no Russian resistance, and Lyman on October 1st, with the Russians retreating disorganizedly and with losses under threat of encirclement to Zarichne.

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Immediately after having recaptured Lyman, the Ukrainians "promised themselves" that this city would never be let in Russian hands again, and began digging many trench systems and obstacles, which at the time were considered extremely good fortifications against any type of assault.

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After the counteroffensive slowly ran out of steam, the Russians reported successes further south near Bakhmut, and the new Ukrainian 2023 counteroffensive failed, the Russian command finally switched back to offensive in late 2023, state that continues to persist to this day, 2 years of 24/7 assault actions later.
Today, Lyman is an almost dead city, under constant Russian FAB, KAB and FPV fire, and threatened from 3 sides, with a river on its back. The Russians seem to want to get their advantageous 2022 positions back.

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Let's analyze the situation we find ourselves in right now.
In white usable Ukrainian supply routes (roads and pontoons), in blue rivers.
- Lyman cut on 3 sides by water obstacles.
- Russian forces crossing the eastern one, Zherebets, at Zarichne, to reach Yampil, and the western one, Nitrius, to capture Novoselivka and Drobysheve.
- Ukrainian trench systems in front of the city are useless because not covered and open to Russian drones.
- Russian drones already controlling the last paved road into Lyman.

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What the Russians really want to do next:
- Capture at least one of the 3: Shandryholove, Novoselivka, Drobysheve. UAV crews will accumulate there safely and, if it won't be possible to physically control the last paved road, it will be possible to have swarms of drones do the job, forcing the Ukrainians to use the pontoons, which are already likely controlled 24/7.
- Capture Stavky. UAV crews will be placed there, too, with the likely objective of rendering Lyman useless for Ukrainian troops as a logistical hub, and making it a dead city, exactly like the situation that developed in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad.
- Capture Yampil and consolidate Zarichne. This will give the Russians a solid bridgehead over the Zherebets river for further operations in the forest south of Lyman.

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Ukrainian possibilities to stop this course of actions:
- Immediately stabilize the Shandryholove sector and deny the Russians getting any closer to Drobysheve and Novoselivka, that is, any further advancement from the current positions. We have seen the Ukrainians sending tanks on firing missions to eliminate Russian accumulations in Shandryholove, so we can deduce that this is being worked on at least partially, but it seems more reinforcements are needed to fulfill this point fully. We could make a similar example with the tank raids on Tolstoy, Komar direction, some weeks ago, that slowed the Russians by a small, but crucial amount, which was enough for the Ukrainians to organize themselves and hold on for much longer.
- Start digging behind Yampil, near Ozerne and Dibrova to avoid the Russians advancing in Lyman's back through the forest, which would cover their movements against Ukraine's "drone army".

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As of right now, the most dangerous part is definitely the Shandryholove sector, rather than the Yampil area.
The damage that would be done by the loss of Drobysheve would be greater than the one that would be caused by the loss of Yampil, and in the latter area it's necessary to remember that, if the Ukrainians retreated in an organized manner from the Kreminna forest, many units find themselves defending a much shorter piece of frontline, significantly aiding in defensive operations in this area.
In the Yampil - Zarichne area, also, many capable units are fighting well, coming from Torske and Kreminna forest.

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Obviously, having to defend a city with only pontoon bridges to supply it does not automatically mean the loss of the city, but in the medium-long term, this would mean a worsening of your operational space and maneuver possibilities in general, as the Ukrainians would find themselves split in 2 separate pockets, as well as a decrease in the overrall number of supplies brought to the zero line, putting a serious strain on logistics that would have to be sent to the same number of forces, slowly converging all in one location.

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What can we expect after the fall of Lyman?
On the western side, I predict the Russians will try to start fighting for the very big forest between Lyman and Izyum with the aim of reaching Oskil. This will give Russian forces multiple benefits:

- Anchoring their western flank of captured Lyman on a forest, very easy to defend and saturate and safer than fields against Ukrainian drones.
- Opening the Sviatohirsk front (southernmost arrow). Capturing the town would be both a big morale blow to the Ukrainians because of the symbolicity of the town, and a great hub to accumulate UAV pilots to seriously harrass Ukrainian logistics coming to Slovyansk on the highway from Izyum.
- Possibility of spearheading Oskil village (central arrow). This would cut the Ukrainian Oskil bridgehead into even smaller pieces after the Pishchane breakthrough of last year, and making dealing with these separate pockets much easier. The final objective would be to restore the soldi contact line on the Oskil river, lost in 2022 to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which would free up a lot of troops to send in other areas deemed more important.
- Possibility of having Izyum under solid fire control from various types of weapons, especially drones and FABs, making Izyum too a dead city.
This, too, would be a blow to Ukrainian morale, impacting the sense of safety of troops gathering in the city and knowing that the Russians are not far.

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On the southern side, I expect the Russians to create large UAV crews accumulations in all of the small villages at the northern shore of the Siversky Donets' river. Especially, Brusivka, Dibrova and Yampil.
These would provide Russia with a great occasion to safely strike deep into Ukrainian territory, and would automatically force a retreat from the whole Siversk salient, as the whole 30km stretch of road from Slovyansk to Siversk would be controlled by Russian strike drones.
Brusivka, for example, allows Russians to strike at the back of the Siversk logistics system, near Slovyansk, especially on the bridges over the Kazenyi Torets' river.

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Regarding the possible Siversky Donets crossing topic, the only crossings I could expect to happen, if any, are behind Siversk. Trench systems are the least in numbers there, and the benefits if a bridgehead were consolidated would be obvious.
In most other places, especially behind Slovyansk all the way to Izyum, the Ukrainians started digging already in 2022 on the tall hills behind the river, and 2 modern fallback lines have already been prepared following 2025 standards.
Any crossing there would be an extremely high risk, high reward operation, but admittedly, the reward might be higher than the risk because of low Russian standards of conserving assets. In particular, they would be able to gain a springboard, just like Izyum and Lyman were in 2022, for a future threat of encirclement of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas.

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Here we are, you've reached the end of this small thread!
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