The whole OPSEC thing is real at the beginning of these operations, as it can create some delays in Russian responses, but beyond that the main "OPSEC" consideration is not showing individual positions Ukraine captured to keep the soldiers safe. Anyone who is mapping these counteroffensives without using their own information from the ground is not putting anyone at risk.
I covered the counteroffensive from the day after it was launched on May 22, and made regular updates on it throughout the next 3.5 months up to now. While the chronology is likely not perfect due to a lack of information, and the frontline will never be 100% accurate, I was still one of the only people in the world who did this. And the thing is, I probably only put around 80-100 hours of work into these Lyman posts during the 3.5-month period. Sure, I had to dig deeper due to the OPSEC regime in place, but it was absolutely doable. Technically anyone else could have done this, but it was only really me and a couple other people (Suriyak and Thorkill).
There's a fine balance with this sort of stuff. Yes, OPSEC is very real in today's war - far more so than in 2022, 2023, 2024, or even 2025. When very few soldiers are actually on the "line of contact", mapping a position as controlled based on your info from the ground can actually endanger them. But after the higher Russian command is aware of the counteroffensive, pretending it's not happening is useless, and only mapping precise control zones is the dangerous part. So I do understand why such an influential mapping project like Deepstate didn't post any updates on it as even if they were to purposefully show a very simplified or incorrect frontline, it could still be used by some lower command for targeting positions, potentially putting Ukrainian soldiers at risk. But ordinary OSINTers aren't going to change anything as long as they are purely using open sources for their mapping, like me.
In my opinion, there is another reason for this beyond the very real issues surrounding OPSEC. If you map a 4-month-long counteroffensive in a single update, even if you specify that it took place over 4 months, it still creates a subconscious illusion for some that it was a lightning counteroffensive. It also means that the heavy casualties taken are largely ignored.
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