Ukrainian forces have left Vladimir Putin red-faced by launching their biggest attack of 2026, liberating 14 towns and mocking fleeing Russian troops
A red-faced Vladimir Putin has suffered a fresh battlefield humiliation after Ukrainian forces launched their “most important attack of the year” to liberate more than a dozen occupied towns. Military intelligence experts say Kyiv’s brave troops swept through 77 square miles of territory in a lightning counter-offensive.
It shatters the Russian tyrant’s boast that his generals had secured the key Donbas stronghold of Sviatohirsk on September 1. Instead, open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts confirmed Putin was getting ahead of himself, with video footage showing a swaggering Ukrainian commander casually strolling through the newly-liberated town.
“Take off your clown noses and colourful wigs. There aren’t any Russian soldiers here,” Andriy Biletsky, the Ukrainian commander of the 3rd Army Corps, said.
The clip was posted just a few days after Putin’s claims, according to The Telegraph.
The attack has been described as the “most important” of 2026 by Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst and co-founder of the Black Bird Group.
The Mirror reports that OSINT experts first realised Ukraine was on the march after drone footage disappeared in the area, according to Phil Cowin, from the UA Control Map group.
“Usually you’d see more drone footage, more video,” he said. “But suddenly around Nove it goes dark – and the Russians weren’t posting any footage of their own attacks as they didn’t want to show the Ukrainians advancing.”
The retreat has reportedly been blamed on decisions made by Russian commanders on-the-ground in the Donbas, rather than by the Kremlin directly, by pro-Russian bloggers.
The news comes hours after a Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border on Sunday (September 13).
The strike occurred shortly after senior visiting officials, including the former prime ministers of the UK and Sweden, passed through, Ukraine’s state rail operator said.
According to Ukrzaliznytsia, a diplomatic train carrying Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt and security advisers from several European Union states had purposely left the station at Yahodyn ahead of schedule. The visitors were on their way back from a security conference in Kyiv.
“It is highly probable that the Russian drone’s intended target was in fact the diplomatic train, which had departed the station earlier than scheduled,” the company said in a Telegram post.