Ukrainian troops gathered for an assault on two Russian-held villages, and the Russians never saw them coming. A captain of the 60th Mechanized Brigade, with the callsign Akhmet, says the concealed buildup near Derylove and Drobysheve was what allowed his units to take the villages once Operation Vivaldi began, Suspilne reports.

The account fills in how Vivaldi actually takes ground: not by overwhelming force but by concealment, timing, and technology. Only the first phase of the "Operation Vivaldi" counteroffensive, which the Third Army Corps is running near Lyman in northern Donetsk Oblast, has cleared 75 square kilometers of Russian infiltrators and liberated another 10 square kilometers of territory.

Concealment set up the assault

The brigade's task was to free Derylove and take control of Drobysheve. The key, Akhmet says, was accumulating forces as covertly as possible in Drobysheve and on the outskirts of Derylove, so the units could begin exactly on schedule.

The Russians, he believes, failed to spot the buildup because Ukraine had done its reconnaissance well during the planning and preparation. Constant coordination with neighboring units, sharing information, and lending help mattered too. The point was to keep the movement and massing hidden until the appointed hour, so nothing tipped the Russians off before the assault opened.

The captain coordinates the fight

As a battle captain, Akhmet oversaw the tasks set by brigade command and the work of several strands at once: reconnaissance, drones, electronic warfare, and air defense.

"We determine where the enemy sits, we inflict fire damage on Russian soldiers, and we cover our groups on the ground," he said.

The job was to find the Russians, strike them, and shield the assault teams as they moved up.

Timing cleared the infantry's path

The brigade also located where Russian drones were taking off and hit those launch points at set times, to keep enemy operators from scouting and firing on the Ukrainian troops working below. Getting the timing right was the whole point, Akhmet explains, so the infantry could move to its positions and reach cover without being caught in the open.

The two villages were a piece of a larger aim: the Institute for the Study of War has assessed that Vivaldi disrupted Russia's plan to encircle the fortified belt of Donetsk cities.