by DAVID AXE
Five months after launching Operation Vivaldi, a local counteroffensive in northern Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps is closing on the most obvious objective: the Zherebets River, a tributary of the Donets River that flows south through eastern Ukraine and forms a natural barrier five miles east of Lyman, the last big free settlement between the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies and the free city of Sloviansk.
It took the Russians 18 months to cross the Zherebets and, marching north of Lyman, extend a 40-square-mile salient toward Sloviansk. Since May, the 3rd Army Corps has all but erased the salient. Crossing the Zherebets from the west—or, as a consolation, fortifying the western bank—would greatly bolster Ukrainian defenses around Sloviansk.
But only along the city’s northern approaches. Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk remain vulnerable to attack from the south.
