Was Black Sea shipping the target on 9 November 2023?

What did the first days of November 2023 reveal about the war in southern Ukraine? By 9 November 2023, a series of strikes on ports, ships and troop positions had marked the preceding week.

The most recent incident came on 8 November 2023. A Russian missile struck a Liberian-flagged vessel as it entered the Pivdennyi Port in Odesa Oblast. One crew member was killed and four others were injured. The ship was being used to transport iron ore to China.

Two days earlier, on 6 November 2023, Russian forces attacked Odesa with drones and missiles. At least eight people were injured, and infrastructure was damaged, including the Odesa Fine Arts Museum.

Strikes in both directions

The fighting was not one-sided. On 4 November 2023, Ukrainian forces struck the Zalyv Shipbuilding yard in the Russian-occupied city of Kerch in Crimea, using cruise missiles. The attack damaged the Russian corvette Askold.

On land, the week had begun with heavy losses. On 3 November 2023, a Russian missile strike killed more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers at an awards ceremony near the front line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the incident could have been avoided, amid anger over the losses.

What the sequence showed

Taken together, the reports from 3 to 8 November 2023 show attacks on the southern coast, on a shipyard in occupied Crimea and on troops near the front line within a single week. The strike on the vessel at Pivdennyi put a foreign-flagged merchant ship, and a crew member's life, among the casualties in Odesa Oblast.