Home › Security › What the war looked like on 5 November 2024
What the war looked like on 5 November 2024
Summary
A look back at a day of missile strikes in Zaporizhzhia and shifting front lines in Donetsk and Kursk oblasts.
What did the war in Ukraine look like on 5 November 2024? It was a day defined by a deadly strike on a southern city, set against developments on several fronts that had been reported in the preceding days.
On 5 November 2024, a Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia killed six people and injured at least 20 others.
Fighting in the east
Two days earlier, on 3 November, the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian military news site DeepStateUA both reported that Russia had captured the settlement of Vyshneve in Donetsk Oblast. Russian troops were reported to be advancing towards Hryhorivka, to the west.
The advance belonged to the Pokrovsk offensive, a Russian operation whose primary goal was the capture of the cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in western Donetsk Oblast. Fighting had intensified after Russian forces took Prohres on 18 and 19 July 2024, a turning point for the offensive northwest of Avdiivka, which Russia had captured in February 2024. By November, combat had been taking place in numerous settlements east and south of Pokrovsk. All of it formed part of a wider eastern theatre, covering Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, that had been active since February 2022.
North Korean troops in Kursk
On 4 November, Ukraine said its forces had engaged North Korean troops for the first time in Kursk Oblast, Russia. The claim was a notable addition to the picture around the 2024 Kursk offensive.
A naval exercise far away
Far from the front, the Indonesian Navy and the Russian Navy began their first joint military exercise on 4 November, in the Java Sea.
The day in context
Taken together, the reports from 3 to 5 November 2024 show a conflict operating on several levels at once: a grinding ground advance in Donetsk Oblast, a new report of foreign troops in Kursk Oblast, missile attacks that reached a city far behind the front line, and Russian naval cooperation with a partner in South-East Asia. For Zaporizhzhia, the day's toll was six dead and at least 20 wounded.
