Update from Ukraine | Awesome! Ukraine is up to Encircle Russian Army in Lyman

At a glance

Denys Davydov opens his 7 August update with a map published by the Russian side and a piece of news he plainly did not expect: Ukraine is counterattacking around Lyman, the town he had written off as a Russian gain for this year. Ukraine has apparently pushed enough force across the Siverskyi Donets on pontoon bridges to liberate villages in the southern sector and to drive counterattack arrows north toward Nove, Derylove and Stavky, and southwest toward Shandryholove. Davydov's read is that the Russian grouping west of Lyman is now the one at risk of being jammed in place, fed by a single road from Zelena Dolyna that Ukrainian drones are hitting.

From there he walks the rest of the line. He treats the Russian map as a best case for Russia and cross checks it: the flags planted around Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad are real advances but not established control, Shakhove is grey rather than taken, and along the Dnipropetrovsk to Donetsk oblast border Ukraine has the initiative at Novopavlivka, Iskra and Piddubne, with a fight for Komar he expects this autumn. He welcomes the reform of the assault regiments that were fed by mobilized men, argues Russia is attacking less this month because it cannot supply the attacks, and shows drone footage of a Russian convoy escort who cannot tell where the drone is coming from because it is not talking to an operator at all.

The back half is a two year retrospective on the Kursk operation, and Davydov does not soften it. Leaning on the French analyst Clément Molin, he says the raid was a mistake by Oleksandr Syrskyi: a genuine tactical success in week one that should have ended in a withdrawal, that instead ran nearly eight months, that cost the best equipment in the army, and that ran concurrent with the loss of Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Selydove and Novohrodivka. He closes on politics: hope in the new commander in chief Mykhailo Drapatyi, frustration that the reforms need a defence minister of Mykhailo Fedorov's calibre, and anger at Volodymyr Zelensky's claim that Washington is deliberately withholding air defence as leverage.

The map that opens the video: Ukraine is counterattacking at Lyman

Davydov starts where he always starts, with the military map review, and he flags the source before he says a word about the content. The map on screen comes from Rybar, the Russian military blogger channel run by Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former press officer of the Russian defence ministry. That provenance is the whole point of showing it. Rybar publishes the optimistic version for Russia, so anything bad for Russia on a Rybar map is, in Davydov's phrase, probably even worse for them on the ground.

And what the Rybar map shows is Ukraine going on the counterattack in the Lyman direction.

He is candid about being surprised. "I'm shocked actually," he says, because before this Ukraine did not have much in Lyman. The supply lines were cut. Ukraine was barely holding the settlement, not attacking out of it. His explanation for the change is logistics rather than heroics: Ukraine appears to have put a couple of pontoon bridges across the Siverskyi Donets, a detail that surfaced in Russian sources roughly three days before this video, and the bridges let more armed forces cross. The counterattack is the result of the bridges, not a substitute for them.

The gains he points to are concrete. In the southern sector Ukraine has liberated two villages, Dibrova among them, which he shows as an upscaled inset of the rectangle on the map. North of the town there are now Ukrainian attack arrows toward Nove, Derylove and Stavky, where before, in his words, "there was nothing from the side." And there are two main southern vectors pointed at Shandryholove.

Why the geometry matters more than the villages

The villages themselves are small. The reason Davydov is excited is the shape they make.

Russia's pressure on Lyman has come from Torske to the east, which he calls their main supply hub for this axis, the place where they keep their forces and their drone operators in basements. Russian units pushed west past Lyman into a string of villages. Ukrainian counterattacks now converging from the south toward Shandryholove and pushing north toward Stavky threaten to close behind that push, and the risk Davydov names is that the Russian army gets "basically jammed in all of those villages more to the west."

He argues the supply crisis for those Russian units is already here rather than pending. There is a single road into Shandryholove from Zelena Dolyna. Everything else is field tracks. And Ukraine, he says, targets everything that moves toward those villages. Asked how Russia resolves that, he is blunt: "Honestly, I'm out of clue." Then, less diplomatically, "Russia is in a deep sh over here."

The strategic reason a small counterattack is possible at all

Davydov steps back here for the frame he returns to in almost every update, and it is worth taking on its own terms because it explains why Lyman is not an isolated fluke.

Russia still has far more resources than Ukraine, several times more, he says without hedging. But Russia itself created a very long front line, and it cannot be successful along all of it. So the Russian command concentrates: some forces in the Kharkiv region, of course in the Donetsk region, and in a third sector. Where the command puts most of the effort, they are successful. Everywhere else, the moment they lose initiative even slightly, "Ukraine immediately gains it."

That makes the enormous front, counterintuitively, a Ukrainian asset as much as a burden. Yes, Ukraine has to split its forces too, and it has fewer of them. But Ukraine is the side in defence, Ukraine has built significant defence lines, and Ukraine, in his assessment, uses more advanced drone technologies more massively. Put those together and Ukraine can be locally successful in spots, "like for example Lyman direction."

Then the admission that gives the video its title energy. "I was sure that Russia would occupy Lyman this year," he says, "but now I have doubts about it."

The supply picture around Lyman, in detail

He walks the logistics carefully, because that is what nearly lost the town.

Russians cut the main bridge on the road running from Lyman to Sloviansk. That was the main supply artery. With the counterattack, Ukraine has pushed Russians away from one more road, from Ozerne, which clears an alternate connection: supplies can come from Ozerne and from Sviatohirsk, where some bridges are still standing, plus the pontoon bridges he mentioned at the top. Russia destroys the pontoons regularly. Ukraine puts them back, again and again, and Davydov is explicit that this is not optional: "Now Ukraine must do it to keep Lyman under control."

Then the mid video break, which is part of the video and belongs in the rebuild: press like right now while you are watching, subscribe, the channel is on the way to a million subscribers, and if you can, support the job on Patreon or through the YouTube join button. "Thank you guys. You're making this content possible."

Reading a Russian map against the grain

Coming back, he restates the methodology, and it is the most useful transferable thing in the video. These are Russian maps. Rybar is affiliated with the Russian defence ministry. Russians publish the good scenario for themselves. Therefore, when a Russian map shows something unfavourable to Russia in a given direction, the actual situation there could be worse for them than drawn. The corollary is the one he applies for the next several minutes: when the same map shows Russian advances, you have to ask what "advance" means.

Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad: flags are not control

In the Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad directions Russia has genuinely moved, pushing a grey zone forward and planting a couple of flags in a settlement west of Pokrovsk that the Russians call by their own name. Davydov shows the zoomed image with the flags behind him and immediately qualifies it. Planting flags does not mean establishing full control over a settlement, because Ukraine is constantly operating with drones there. "The flag operations, they do not end usually well for Russians. It's kind of rare that they keep the ground for long."

His summary judgement on this axis is honest in both directions: the Pokrovsk direction is one where Russia genuinely has an advantage, and at the same time Russia is putting a great deal into the red zone that has not actually been secured.

Shakhove: grey, not taken

Two settlements on the map are coloured as Russian that Davydov says are not. Shakhove is in a grey area. Its neighbour, which he names as Sofiivka, is under Ukrainian control. There has been no confirmation that Russians managed to occupy either. More than that, Russians recently tried to move on Shakhove from two directions and their convoys were destroyed on the way, in his idiom "kaputed." So the whole area very close to Shakhove is grey, not red.

Myrne and the 0525 road

The Russian map shows an attack vector at Myrne and new territorial gains near road 0525. Davydov confirms the part he can: Ukrainian soldiers confirmed the fight for Myrne around three days ago. Whether Russian soldiers actually got into the settlement and occupied it is a different question, and he points out that even the Russian map draws it grey.

The Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblast border: Ukraine has the initiative

This is where his assessment turns most positive. Along the border between the two oblasts Ukraine has an advantage in multiple areas.

Ukraine pushed Russian forces out of Novopavlivka, which he dates to the beginning of this month or possibly the very end of the previous one. Ukraine has a couple of counterattacks running toward Iskra and toward Piddubne, and according to his information there were fights in Piddubne that moved it into the grey area. Ukraine is also trying to cross the river here. The rest of this stretch of front has no major changes; the fighting is concentrated in the Komar hotspot.

The Komar envelopment he thinks is coming

Davydov switches to a second map, the one he attributes to a mapper he calls Michael 73, and reads the attack vectors on it. Myrne grey. Ukraine propelled forward close to two settlements on the far side of the river. His open question is whether the river has actually been crossed by the Ukrainian army.

If it has, he says, there is a huge risk for the Russian army group in Komar, because Ukraine could commence a separation from two sides. He names the method for what it is: "a Russian classical tactics to jam Russian forces between Ukrainian army, Ukrainian strikes and the river." Russians would then be forced to leave Komar rather than be destroyed in it. From what he sees of this counteroffensive, he thinks Ukraine really is working to that scenario. And he adds a detail that matters for how seriously to take it: Ukrainian airborne brigades and regiments are fighting there, and they are "very, very capable."

He puts a rough date on it too. The fight for Komar is imminent, and he thinks it happens this autumn.

The Orikhiv infiltration, and what infiltration actually costs

Davydov moves to a third source, an interactive map from an analyst he calls Michael Sensei, which shows Russians trying to reach Orikhiv in the south.

He can confirm part of it from his own information. Two days earlier a few Russian soldiers did make it, crossing a lot of open ground across the fields and bypassing two settlements, Novodanylivka and Mala Tokmachka, before reaching the road into Orikhiv. Part of the group was destroyed on the way at Mala Tokmachka. The rest, he says, "found its end at the street of Lesya Ukrainka, one of the famous writers of Ukraine." He shows the exact house.

The conclusion he draws is the doctrinal one, and it is the setup for the section that follows. Yes, it is possible to infiltrate into the kill zone, into the drone zone. But for what reason? "To have more losses." That is why, he says, you will not see this kind of operation from Ukraine, at least not over that distance. Ukraine does infiltrate, but with armoured vehicles to protect the infantry, and the infiltrations are very well organised.

The reform Davydov has been waiting for: Skelia and the 225th

Then the news he calls great, delivered almost as an aside.

He refers to the Skelia regiment, which he characterises as Syrskyi's favourite, "organized to meat grind mobilized soldiers and other soldiers," and to the 225th, correcting himself mid sentence from brigade to regiment. According to recent information the unit will be transformed and reformed, shrinking to a smaller formation, with its soldiers distributed to other units.

His verdict: "This is good. This is what should have been done long time ago."

What is being cancelled, in his framing, is a whole style of fighting. The encouragement of "hooray, let's go" Russian style attacks is over. From now on Ukraine will move forward gradually, in specific spots that are profitable for Ukraine, but the general idea is to stay more in defence, lose fewer soldiers and fewer resources, and let Russia grind its own army down in infiltration attacks. "I think this approach is way, way better for Ukraine."

He even names the cost of it for his own content. There will be fewer arrows for him to discuss, and the maps will look like Russia is attacking all the time and taking more territory with those infiltrations. He wants viewers to understand that the appearance and the arithmetic point in opposite directions.

Why Russia is attacking less this month

The arithmetic is the next section. Russians have significant losses, but this month they are losing fewer soldiers, and Davydov is careful about why: not because they got better, but because they are commencing fewer attacks. They do not have enough soldiers. That is also the basis for his prediction that Russia will announce a new mobilization.

He cites Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, who has said this month was terrible for the Russians because they lost a great deal of supplies on the way to the front. Unable to move materiel, they cannot organise attacks the way they did in July. And July was the benchmark: in July, Davydov says, Russia lost a record number of soldiers.

The number he lands on, attributed to that statistical picture holding: if the statistics continue and nothing extraordinary happens, Russia may lose 16 percent fewer soldiers this month than the previous one, simply because there is not enough supply to run infiltration and mass wave attacks at scale.

At Kostiantynivka there are no changes, he adds, except some new vehicle losses for Ukraine. "Yeah, it happens." Russia meanwhile is taking big losses both behind the front lines and at them.

The drone footage: a gunner who cannot find the drone

The interdiction he has been describing in the abstract then arrives as video, and Davydov narrates it shot by shot.

He identifies the aircraft as a RAM X2 or 2X type drone, and what he notices first is the optics: "Look at this quality of the picture. This is amazing. This is so, so nice." It has a good zoom camera, and it is following Russians well behind the line of contact. The point of the clip is that these Russian soldiers are not making it to the battlefield at all.

The detail he fixes on is the gunner. The man has a machine gun, a turret in his hands, and he is staring at one spot the entire time, looking for the drone in the wrong direction. The drone is coming from behind him. He has no tools to determine the direction of an incoming drone, and Davydov argues it is essentially impossible for him to work it out, because the drone is not maintaining a control link with an operator that could be detected. It flies on its own. There is a visual signal being transmitted, which he notices in the image, but not the constant two way control connection that Russian electronic systems would be listening for.

That is the asymmetry he wants viewers to see. Russians lack this class of electronic capability and the drone detection systems Ukraine has. He is careful about what Ukrainian systems actually do: he is not sure they show the direction the drone is coming from, but at minimum they scream that a drone is incoming. This man had nothing, so he watched one point of the sky for the whole clip.

And the escorts became the priority target themselves. They were protecting trucks in a convoy, "but they became the targets number one themselves."

Two years since Kursk: the retrospective

"And guys, just to recall the major event that happened two years ago." The Kursk operation launched on 6 August 2024, and Davydov spends the last third of the video on what it was for and what it cost. He builds the section around the assessment of Clément Molin, whom he introduces as "the great expert for the war in Ukraine," and then adds his own.

What the operation was designed to do

Molin's reading, as Davydov relays it: the Kursk operation was a big mistake by Alexander Syrskyi, then commander of the Ukrainian army. It was conceived as a raid into Russia intended to force a Russian redeployment away from the east, while capturing prisoners and destroying part of the Sever, or North, grouping that had been attacking Kharkiv for a week.

And it came with a command cost. Syrskyi disappeared to take direct command of operations in Kursk even as the situation at Pokrovsk was becoming catastrophic.

Week one worked. That was the moment to leave.

Davydov does not dispute the opening. The first week was a genuine success. Ukraine propelled a long way into Russian territory despite low numbers of strikes. But Russian resistance in depth proved stronger than anticipated, and Molin's judgement is that at that point the Ukrainians should have withdrawn.

Davydov's own version of the same argument is built on a specific objective. He said at the time, and repeats here, that the strategic prize would have been the Kursk nuclear power station: take it, hold it, and trade it later for the Zaporizhzhia plant. That would have been a strategic plan worth the risk. The tactical success arrived very fast, in week one. If the strategic one was not going to arrive, then, in his words, "what's the use of keeping them there."

Instead the Ukrainian presence in Kursk lasted nearly eight months, and in Molin's phrase it produced too many avoidable losses.

What was happening in Donbas at the same time

This is the part of the retrospective that carries the weight, because it is the opportunity cost stated in place names.

While the operation ran, Russian forces were entering several strategic towns along the Avdiivka to Pokrovsk axis. Novohrodivka, Selydove and Ukrainsk fell, Davydov says, without facing significant Ukrainian resistance.

And the resources committed to Kursk were the best Ukraine had. Strykers everywhere, Leopard tanks, capable Ukrainian attacking forces. That led to significant losses, though he is careful to scale the claim: not as significant as Bakhmut, or as the major counteroffensive operation of 2023.

The honest part: he was cheering too

Davydov does not exempt himself. "Back then I was also cheerful that the Ukrainian army made it." And he still credits what was genuinely unprecedented about it: the first time a clear superpower was hit, was attacked by a non nuclear country, and was forced to retreat.

He remembers the internal Russian recrimination that followed, the beef between the Akhmat units that had been protecting the border and the Russian FSB and generals, all of them accusing each other of reckless behaviour and of abandoning positions.

But Ukraine went in very fast, and behind the thin border screen there were Russian army reserves. Ukraine was not capable of extending its supply lines at the same speed. Russians accumulated forces and pushed the Ukrainian army back with counterattacks, little by little.

Then the consequence he treats as the real bill. Russia is now occupying parts of Ukraine's Sumy region, and that started from the Kursk operation. They gained the momentum there, and several Ukrainian settlements remain under Russian control. "It is all because of the Kursk."

The numbers Molin puts on it

Two statistics carry Molin's case, and Davydov reads them out.

During the period of Ukrainian presence in Kursk, the Russian army achieved 45 percent of all the gains it made in Donbas between October 2023 and 2026. For comparison, since the beginning of 2026, only 7 percent of the gains from that period have been achieved. Molin's conclusion, which Davydov endorses, is that Ukraine is now concentrated on defence, and that this helps a great deal to secure ground and to cause Russia even more losses.

The territorial ledger for those nine months is a list of towns. Davydov reads it: the Russians captured eight small towns, naming Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Hirnyk, Kurakhivka, Ukrainsk, Selydove and Novohrodivka, while approaching Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad and entering Toretsk. "So yeah, the forces were used, I would say, even recklessly."

• Aug 2024Ukraine launches the Kursk operation, conceived as a raid to force a Russian redeployment from the east, take prisoners, and break up the Sever grouping then attacking Kharkiv.
• Week 1Genuine tactical success. Ukraine drives deep into Russian territory despite low strike numbers. The first time a nuclear superpower is attacked by a non nuclear state and forced to give ground. Recrimination breaks out between Akhmat units on the border and the FSB and Russian generals.
• Week 2 onRussian resistance in depth proves stronger than anticipated. Molin's verdict: this was the moment to withdraw. Davydov's test: without the Kursk nuclear plant to trade for Zaporizhzhia, there is no strategic prize left to stay for.
• MeanwhileAlong the Avdiivka to Pokrovsk axis, Novohrodivka, Selydove and Ukrainsk fall without significant resistance. Over the nine months Russia takes eight small towns, approaches Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, and enters Toretsk.
• The costNearly eight months of Ukrainian presence, many units rotating through, Strykers and Leopards committed. Russian reserves behind the border screen push Ukraine back as its supply lines fail to keep pace.
• AfterRussia carries the momentum across the border into Sumy oblast. Several Ukrainian settlements there remain occupied. "It is all because of the Kursk."
• 2026Ukraine concentrates on defence. Russian gains fall to 7 percent of the October 2023 to 2026 total, against 45 percent banked during the Kursk months.
• Jul 2026Drapatyi replaces Syrskyi as commander in chief and begins reforming the army from inside, including the assault regiments.

Command, reform, and the missing defence minister

Davydov's hope rests on the change at the top. With General Mykhailo Drapatyi in charge of the Ukrainian army command, he does not expect a repeat of Kursk, and he is emphatic about why. "Drapatyi is not just a great guy or something. No, he's way more competent than Syrskyi. He thinks differently and he already reforms Ukrainian army from inside." The information now surfacing about terrible command practices and about specific brigades being refurbished and reformed is, he says, encouraging in a way.

But he does not think the transformation completes without a defence minister to match, and here he is pointed. The major transformation is still not possible without a proper defence minister like Mykhailo Fedorov, whose name he stops to pronounce correctly on air: "Like Fedorov, not Fedоrоf. Exactly." Ukraine needs those reforms.

On Ihor Klymenko, the man Zelensky sees as defence minister, Davydov's assessment is a shrug: "Well, I'm not sure."

He then reports on an interview Fedorov recently gave to Serhii Sternenko, whom he calls the biggest Ukrainian drone volunteer. Two things stood out to him. First, Fedorov does not exclude that he might become defence minister after all. Second, and more immediately relevant, Fedorov still wants to help the Ukrainian army as far as he can. Ukraine is in a transition period, Davydov says, where Fedorov's team is partially still working, and Fedorov says so himself.

Fedorov, Musk, and using Starlink against ballistic launchers

The concrete piece of that is a channel Davydov clearly rates. Fedorov is directly communicating with Elon Musk. Not pushing him, in Davydov's characterisation, but trying to cooperate and to find a variant of how to use Starlink against Russian ballistic missile launchers.

The obstacle he identifies is political rather than technical. Musk wants to connect it to Donald Trump, "but we know the attitude of Donald Trump."

The accusation the video ends on

Davydov closes on the claim Zelensky is now making publicly: that Ukraine's Western partners, the United States of America in particular, do not want to let Ukraine have air defence capabilities, and that Kyiv reads this as pressure, a way to push Ukraine toward capitulation style negotiations.

He states plainly why that would matter, and the reasoning is about targets rather than politics. With ballistic missiles Russia hits everything, "especially usual infrastructure, you know, civilian one." Air defence is the only thing standing between the launchers and those targets.

Then the line the video ends on, conditional but unmistakable: "if it is truth what Zelensky says, this is definitely a terrible stuff, and there is no difference between Putin and Trump in this case."

And then the sign off, the same one every time: the Patreon link, the join button, press like, subscribe, on the way to a million subscribers, "and I wish you all a peaceful sky wherever you are."

Key takeaways

• Ukraine is counterattacking at Lyman, and even the Russian maps show it. Two villages liberated in the southern sector, arrows north toward Nove, Derylove and Stavky, and two vectors southwest onto Shandryholove. Davydov, who was sure Russia would take Lyman this year, now doubts it.
• The counterattack is a logistics story first. Pontoon bridges over the Siverskyi Donets, reported by Russian sources three days earlier, are what let Ukraine put enough force across. Russia destroys them regularly; Ukraine rebuilds them, because holding Lyman requires it.
• The Russian grouping west of Lyman now has the supply problem. One road in from Zelena Dolyna, field tracks otherwise, and Ukrainian drones on everything that moves.
• Read Russian maps as a floor, not a ceiling. Rybar is affiliated with the Russian defence ministry and publishes the best case for Russia, so anything unfavourable on it is probably worse in reality. Applying that test, Shakhove is grey rather than taken, Sofiivka is Ukrainian, and the flags west of Pokrovsk mark an advance rather than control.
• Komar may be the next place a Russian grouping has to leave. If Ukraine crosses the river near Myrne, a two sided separation could pin the Russian group against the water. Ukrainian airborne units are fighting there. Davydov expects the fight this autumn.
• Russia is attacking less because it cannot supply the attacks. Citing Madyar Brovdi, Davydov expects roughly 16 percent fewer Russian personnel losses this month than in July, which set a record, and reads the shortfall as a precursor to a new mobilization announcement.
• An autonomous drone leaves the defender nothing to detect. No control link means no emission to hear, so the convoy escort in the footage scans one patch of sky while the drone closes from behind.
• The assault regiment reform is the structural change he has wanted. Skelia and the 225th shrinking and redistributing their soldiers ends the "hooray, let's go" style of attack and formalises a defensive posture that spends fewer Ukrainian lives.
• The Kursk verdict, two years on, is that it was a mistake. A real tactical win in week one, no strategic prize secured, nearly eight months of avoidable losses, the best equipment in the army committed, and 45 percent of all Russian Donbas gains since October 2023 banked while it ran.
• Command has changed; the ministry has not. Davydov trusts Drapatyi to run the army differently, doubts the reforms complete without a defence minister of Fedorov's calibre, and ends on Zelensky's charge that Washington is withholding air defence as leverage.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Rybar map: Ukraine counterattacks in the Lyman direction
• 2:35 Why a long front line cuts both ways
• 3:37 The Lyman supply picture: the cut bridge, Ozerne, Sviatohirsk, pontoons
• 4:18 Like, subscribe, Patreon, on the way to a million
• 4:51 How to read a map published by the Russian defence ministry's blogger
• 5:14 Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad: flags planted, control not established
• 6:00 Shakhove and Sofiivka are grey, and the convoys that tried
• 6:30 Myrne and the new gains claimed near road 0525
• 6:58 The oblast border: Novopavlivka pushed, Iskra and Piddubne counterattacked
• 7:59 Komar: crossing the river and jamming a Russian group against it
• 9:06 The Orikhiv infiltration and the house on Lesya Ukrainka street
• 10:02 Why Ukraine does not run long distance infiltration
• 10:30 Skelia and the 225th get reformed, and the meat grinder ends
• 11:29 Fewer Russian attacks, Madyar's numbers, and a coming mobilization
• 12:32 Kostiantynivka: no changes, some vehicle losses
• 12:48 Drone footage: the escort who cannot find the drone
• 14:22 Two years since Kursk: what the operation was for
• 15:23 The moment Ukraine should have withdrawn
• 16:09 Eight months, the best equipment, and the towns lost meanwhile
• 16:50 Davydov's own retrospect, and the Russian recriminations
• 17:46 Sumy: the occupation that started with Kursk
• 18:04 The numbers: 45 percent then, 7 percent now, eight small towns
• 18:47 Drapatyi, and reform from inside
• 19:25 Fedorov, Klymenko, and the Sternenko interview
• 20:04 Starlink against ballistic launchers, Musk, Trump, and air defence
• 21:05 Sign off: a peaceful sky wherever you are

Notable quotes

• 0:33 "Definitely Ukraine is, I'm shocked actually, because before Ukraine didn't have lots of the resources in Lyman because supply lines were cut. But it seems like somehow Ukraine managed to get more forces."
• 1:20 "There is the great risk for the Russian army to basically be jammed in all of those villages more to the west."
• 1:35 "There is simply a single road that goes to Shandryholove from Zelena Dolyna and the rest are just small field roads and Ukraine targets everything that is going to those villages."
• 2:50 "Russia itself created this very long front line and it cannot be successful elsewhere. So where the Russian military command puts the most of the efforts they're successful. The rest of the front lines, if they barely lose initiative, Ukraine immediately gains it."
• 3:37 "I was sure that Russia would occupy Lyman this year, but now I have doubts about it."
• 4:51 "This guy Rybar is affiliated with the Russian Defense Ministry, and Russians as usual they publish the good scenario for them. And if they show this picture it means that the actual situation could be even worse for them in this specific direction."
• 5:40 "It doesn't mean that Russians have established the full control over the settlement, because Ukraine is constantly operating with the drones. So the flag operations, they do not end usually well for Russians."
• 8:20 "I would say using a Russian classical tactics to jam Russian forces between Ukrainian army, Ukrainian strikes and the river. So Russians basically will be forced to leave Komar."
• 10:02 "It's possible to infiltrate into the kill zone, into the drone zone, but for what reason? To have more losses."
• 10:50 "This is good. This is what should have been done long time ago. So this encouragement of hooray let's go, those Russian style attacks, this is been cancelled."
• 11:10 "The idea is to stay more in defense, to lose less soldiers, less resources, and let Russia meat grind its army in those infiltration attacks."
• 11:50 "This month, if statistics continues, if nothing extraordinary happens, Russia may lose 16 percent less of the soldiers compared to the previous months, simply because they don't have enough supplies."
• 13:30 "He doesn't have any sort of the tools to define the direction of the drone incoming. And it's impossible actually to define it, because the drone itself doesn't have the connection to the drone operator. It flies on its own."
• 14:10 "They're protecting those trucks in the convoy, but they became the targets number one themselves."
• 15:23 "At that point the Ukrainians should have withdrawn."
• 15:50 "If you are not achieving the strategic one with this nuclear power plant, at least you should withdraw the forces. Like, what's the use of keeping them there?"
• 16:50 "Back then I was also cheerful that the Ukrainian army made it. You know, the first time the clear superpower was hit, was attacked by non nuclear power country and was forced to retreat."
• 17:55 "Now several of the Ukrainian settlements are still under Russian control. It is all because of the Kursk."
• 16:30 "So yeah, the forces were used, I would say, even recklessly."
• 18:47 "Drapatyi is not just a great guy or something. No, he's way more competent than Syrskyi. He thinks differently and he already reforms Ukrainian army from inside."
• 20:04 "Elon Musk wants to connect it to Donald Trump, but we know the attitude of Donald Trump."
• 20:40 "If it is truth what Zelensky says, this is definitely a terrible stuff, and there is no difference between Putin and Trump in this case."

Resources mentioned

Map and analysis sources he reads on screen

• Rybar — the Russian military blogging channel whose map opens the video, founded by Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former press officer of the Russian defence ministry. Davydov's entire reading method depends on knowing this.
• Clément Molin — the French analyst whose assessment of the Kursk operation Davydov reads out at length and endorses.
• The mappers he names on air as "Michael 73" and "Michael Sensei" — the second and third maps in the video, the first a static frontline map with attack vectors, the second an interactive map. The audio does not resolve their handles clearly enough to link with confidence.

People

• Denys Davydov — the author of the video, a Ukrainian former commercial airline pilot turned citizen journalist, main channel here.
• Oleksandr Syrskyi — commander in chief during the Kursk operation, the subject of the retrospective's criticism.
• Mykhailo Drapatyi — the current commander in chief, in post since July 2026, whom Davydov credits with reforming the army from inside.
• Mykhailo Fedorov — the former defence minister whose dismissal in July 2026 triggered nationwide protests, and whom Davydov considers necessary to the reforms.
• Ihor Klymenko — the man Zelensky has picked for the defence ministry, about whom Davydov is noncommittal.
• Robert "Madyar" Brovdi — commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, cited for the claim that Russian supply losses are suppressing the attack tempo.
• Serhii Sternenko — the drone fundraiser whose recent interview with Fedorov Davydov watched and summarises.
• Lesya Ukrainka — the Ukrainian writer whose street in Orikhiv is where the infiltrating Russian group was destroyed.

Units and hardware

• 425th "Skelia" Assault Regiment and the 225th Separate Assault Regiment — the assault formations Davydov says are being reformed and reduced.
• Ukrspecsystems — maker of the RAM family of loitering munitions, Davydov's identification of the drone in the strike footage.
• Starlink — the constellation Fedorov and Musk are discussing using against Russian ballistic missile launchers.

Places, in the order he covers them

• Lyman, Stavky, Derylove, Nove, Dibrova, Shandryholove, Zelena Dolyna, Torske, Ozerne
• Siverskyi Donets, Sloviansk, Sviatohirsk
• Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, Shakhove, Myrne
• Novopavlivka, Iskra, Piddubne, Komar
• Orikhiv, Novodanylivka, Mala Tokmachka
• Kostiantynivka, Toretsk, Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Kurakhivka, Hirnyk, Ukrainsk, Selydove, Novohrodivka, Bakhmut
• Kursk oblast and the Kursk nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Sumy oblast

Where it stands

Everything above is Davydov's daily read, and it is worth being precise about which parts of it are load bearing elsewhere and which are his own judgement.

Independently corroborated. The Lyman counterattack is real and was being reported by multiple trackers in the same week, including Ukrainian capture and consolidation at Shandryholove and Kolodiazi, with Zarichne, Dibrova, Ozerne and Stavky described as zones of unstable control and Ukrainian reserves newly transferred into the sector. The command changes are documented: Fedorov was dismissed as defence minister on 15 July 2026, protests followed, and Drapatyi replaced Syrskyi as commander in chief on 21 July. The assault regiment reform is also on the record: Drapatyi halted personnel intake to the assault regiments from 26 July, after investigations into deaths and abuse in Skelia and the 225th, units that had enjoyed direct patronage from Syrskyi and, in Skelia's case, had grown past 10,000 troops against a normal regimental establishment of 3,000 to 4,000. The Kursk assessment Davydov reads is Clément Molin's published analysis, not a paraphrase, and Molin's framing of the raid, the missed withdrawal point and the fall of Novohrodivka, Selydove and Ukrainsk matches what he says on air.

His own read, offered as such. That Lyman will not fall this year. That the Russian grouping west of Lyman is already in a supply crisis rather than heading toward one. That Ukraine will cross the river and force the Russian group out of Komar this autumn. These are forecasts from a commentator who is transparent about revising them, and he revises one of them on camera in this very video.

Worth flagging. The 16 percent figure is Davydov's projection from a partial month, not a published Ukrainian General Staff number, and he says so ("if statistics continues"). It also sits awkwardly beside Brovdi's own public figures for July, which described the number of Russian personnel involved in offensive operations as up 12 percent on June and 18 percent on May. Both can be true, since attacking personnel committed and personnel lost are different quantities, but the direction of Davydov's inference is his own. Separately, the claim that the United States is deliberately withholding air defence to force Ukraine into negotiations is presented as Zelensky's assertion, and Davydov states his conclusion conditionally on it being true. Treat it as a reported political claim rather than an established fact.

A note on names. This video has no creator chapters and no on screen text in the transcript, and the automatic captions mangle Ukrainian place names heavily. Where the intended settlement is unambiguous from the geography he describes, it is spelled correctly here and linked. Where it is not, notably the settlement west of Pokrovsk that he says Russians call by their own name, the two settlements across the river near Komar, and the handles of the two mappers he calls Michael 73 and Michael Sensei, the page says so rather than guessing. Chapter timestamps are estimated from position in the transcript, so treat them as close rather than exact.