The Liman salient operation is a useful case study in how the moscovian information space processes a slow, grinding Ukrainian advance.
The Initial Assault on Nove
Clement Molin’s reconstruction, built from satellite imagery of Moscow’s airstrikes and the resulting burn scars, offers a provisional view of the campaign. He says so himself. But the logic holds, and the silence from the usual moscovian cartographers is louder than any of their usual cope.
What actually happened, based on his timeline, is that Ukraine started cutting the salient on May 22. A mechanized battalion from the 3rd Assault Brigade, backed by the 60th and 66th, pushed from the forests east of Izium toward Nove. The attack took losses, around five vehicles, mostly to fiber-optic drones.
That detail matters. When fiber-optic FPVs are the ones flying reliably, the electronic warfare environment is so dense that standard radio-controlled drones are useless. Both sides are fighting blind in the spectrum, and the side that adapts faster gets to move.
Multi-Axis Compression
Ukraine adapted. They consolidated in the tree lines east of Nove, then spent the next week clearing the village itself. By June 1, Nove was effectively liberated. Then the advance split.
One force pushed south toward Zelena Dolyna, another worked the western flank, and by late July a third route opened through the ravine east of Nove near Novomykhailivka. It’s a blitz: a deliberate, multi-axis compression of a salient, the kind of operation that looks boring on a daily map but becomes catastrophic for the defender over three months.
By mid-August, Ukrainian forces reached the northern outskirts of Kolodiazi. That is when the moscovian mapmakers started quietly updating their polygons. Divgen, Radov, and Rybar stayed silent. They just shifted Nove to contested, adjusted the gray zones, and pretended the trend was normal.
When moscovian cartographers stop making bold claims and start silently redrawing lines, the situation on the ground has already turned against them.
Cutting the Salient
The second mechanized assault on August 24, Independence Day, was aimed east between Katerynivka and Novoliubivka. That cut the salient. Not a full encirclement, and Molin is right to reject the hype about a large trapped grouping.
But some moscovian soldiers are cut off west of Kolodiazi, and retreating through open fields under Ukrainian drone coverage is a death sentence. They know it. Their commanders know it. And their propagandists know it, which is why the official line has been so quiet.
A Ukrainian offensive in 2026 would involve coordinated strikes and ground maneuvers. No sweeping arrows across the map, no dramatic breakthrough, just months of tree line fighting, drone attrition, and the slow strangulation of moscovian logistics.
The Strategic Trap
The moscovian army keeps feeding units into salients like this because their doctrine cannot admit that a static front is a losing front. So they hold ground that becomes a trap, and then they lie about it until the maps make the lie obvious.
The operational picture is already a week old. Ukrainian forces are still clearing the western pocket, and the moscovian units stuck there have no good options:
- Surrender
- Die in place
- Run through the drones
Moscovia’s imperial project forces its soldiers to make this choice. This conflict deserves close Western attention because it demonstrates how a defending army performs with ample time, drones, and political support to fight according to its own strategy. Ukraine seeks the green light to win. It is demonstrating how.
