Ukraine’s recent advances around Lyman offer a glimpse of how warfare is changing. During Operation Vivaldi, Ukrainian forces combined electronic warfare, air defence, aerial drones, unmanned ground vehicles and mechanised manoeuvre in one offensive, restoring control over 125 square kilometres in northern Donetsk Oblast.
In a new commentary for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Olena Davlikanova, Senior Fellow at Sahaidachnyi Security Center and CEPA, examines what Operation Vivaldi says about Ukraine’s military adaptation and Europe’s approach to its own security.
Operation Vivaldi brought together technologies and tactics that Ukraine has been developing throughout the full-scale war. For Olena Davlikanova, its significance lies in how quickly Ukraine can connect invention with battlefield use.
Technologies are tested, modified after failures and introduced at scale in increasingly short cycles. In the first eight months of 2026 alone, Ukrainian ground robots carried out more than 100,000 logistics and evacuation missions. Similar experimentation is taking place at sea: Ukrainian unmanned systems have already been used both against Russian naval drones and to deliver armed ground robots to occupied territory.
This adaptability is also evident in Ukraine’s wider military innovation, including FPV drones, long-range strike systems, and the rapid use of commercial technology on the battlefield. Operation Spiderweb demonstrated the same ability to rethink established approaches when Ukrainian drones were covertly transported deep into Russia and used against military aircraft on the ground. Some of these advances benefited from Western assistance; others emerged despite delays, restrictions and political caution surrounding that support.
At the same time, however, Russia is adapting as well. Olena Davlikanova points to the Sahaidachnyi Security Center’s Everywhere War Tracker, which records a sustained pattern of Russian sabotage, cyber operations, airspace and maritime violations and other hostile activity across Europe. Warnings that Moscow could eventually test NATO’s Article 5 are now coming from NATO officials, national governments and European security authorities themselves.
Seen from this perspective, Ukrainian operations such as Vivaldi are part of Europe’s forward defence. Russia does not need to dismantle NATO or the EU formally to weaken them. Repeated hostile actions that meet a hesitant or fragmented response can gradually undermine the credibility of European deterrence.
Olena Davlikanova argues that the gap between Ukraine’s battlefield adaptation and Europe’s political approach has become increasingly difficult to sustain.
“The strategy of exhausting Russia through the exhaustion of Ukraine has exhausted itself,” she observed.
Read the full commentary, “A Time to Reap: Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi,” on CEPA.