Severodonetsk: Ukrainian counterattack and doubts over who holds the city

Severodonetsk: the Ukrainian counterattack that redraws the map

June 2022. On day 101 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a message circulating on a forum, a counterattack by Ukrainian forces returns part of Severodonetsk to Kyiv's control and pushes the Russian spearhead out to the outskirts of the city, in open ground with few buildings to shelter in. The report circulating — attributed to a military tracking account and accompanied by a map — claims that the Ukrainians will exploit that terrain advantage with successive counteroffensives and that, within hours, not a single invading soldier will have a foothold in the city. The euphoria lasts exactly as long as it takes someone to bring up Mariupol.

The discussion splits in two from the very first minute. Some read the Russian pullback as a Ukrainian tactical success and celebrate the moment; others read it as the penultimate chapter of a film they have already seen: the resistance inside a besieged city, the attrition, and a final evacuation presented as mission accomplished. The map, the geolocation data of the fighting and the very word "counterattack" become the battlefield of an argument that, two years on, still has no referee.

What peine in Severodonetsk and why the terrain matters

The starting point is concrete: the Russian spearhead has been pushed out of the urban core and is left in open ground, with little built cover. In an artillery war, that difference — fighting between buildings or fighting in the open — is not an aesthetic detail. It is the difference between hiding and being located.

The report adds that the Ukrainians will launch successive counteroffensives and that **no invader is expected to hold positions in the city** within hours. The claim is bold and, like any military prediction made in the heat of the moment, ages fast. The map accompanying the message seeks to back up the location of the fighting with open-source data, that journalistic-military genre of geolocating videos and photos to reconstruct the front line.

The irony comes from elsewhere. While some celebrate the advance, others point out that **the city has been the epicentre of attrition for weeks** and that a tactical pullback is not the same as a defeat. War is not played on a scoreboard.

The Mariupol comparison nobody wants to hear

The most repeated objection has a name: **Mariupol**. There, the resistance at the Azovstal steelworks was presented for weeks as a symbol of defiance and ended with the evacuation of the remaining fighters. Anyone citing that precedent argues that Severodonetsk is heading the same way: a mission accomplished that ends with an orderly withdrawal.

The answer to that objection is twofold. First, that the Azovstal evacuation did happen, and the problem is not acknowledging it but the framing used to tell the story. Second, that **comparing two cities with different geographies and garrisons is misleading**: what worked in one need not repeat itself in the other.

There is a third, more uncomfortable reading: that the argument over who controls which building is secondary to the one fact nobody disputes, the human toll. "Tens of thousands of Ukrainians serving as regular troops have already died," someone goes so far as to write, and that sentence punctures any map-based celebration.

The counterattack as narrative: feints, evacuations and slogans

As the hours pass, the tone shifts. What began as an optimistic report turns into an exercise in scepticism. References appear to the "feint" — the feigned retreat that sets a trap — to evacuations presented as clever manoeuvres, and to the idea that **every Ukrainian withdrawal is sold as a victory** and every Russian advance as an inevitable defeat.

The sarcasm sharpens. People talk about recapturing Lysychansk in order to reach Severodonetsk, about "orderly" evacuations and about counterattacks that turn into successful retreats. The discussion drifts towards language: whoever controls the words controls the scoreboard. And in that fight, both sides use the same playbook.

The most bitter point comes from whoever recalls that **the counterattack was presented as a decisive blow** and that, as the days went by, the city returned to the centre of the attrition. It is not a refutation of the facts; it is a warning about 24-hour predictions.

Data, maps and the difficulty of knowing who runs a city

In urban warfare, control is not binary. You can hold the entrance, the centre, the road junction or the industrial district, and lose it all within hours. Open-source maps help, but **every side publishes its own map** and none is neutral.

The discussion reflects that ambiguity. Some speak of total expulsion; others, of fighting on the outskirts; others say the city "is indefensible" and should have fallen earlier if the invading army were not so slow. All three statements can be true at once in different parts of the map.

What is clear is the pattern: **the cities of the Donbas have become grinders**, where control changes hands building by building and where propaganda moves faster than artillery.

What remains of that counterattack

The initial report promised that within hours no invader would be left in the city. The later, more sceptical conversation stops right there: at the promise and its fulfilment. There is no closure. The city went on being the place where both armies' endurance was measured, and the counterattack remained just another episode in a war of attrition that is not decided on a Twitter map.

The only thing that did not age was the reminder that this is not football. And that, in a war, **the scoreboard is written by whoever survives to tell the tale**.