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What 5 November 2024 showed about the war's reach
Summary
A Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia, a first reported clash with North Korean troops and advances near Pokrovsk marked the days around 5 November 2024.
What did the war look like on 5 November 2024? A Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia killed six people and injured at least 20 others, while the days just before it brought developments on three other fronts of the conflict.
Strikes on a city far from the front line
The Zaporizhzhia attack on 5 November 2024 was the day's clearest toll on civilians: six dead and at least 20 wounded in a single missile strike.
A new participant in Kursk Oblast
On 4 November 2024, Ukraine said its forces had engaged North Korean troops for the first time in Kursk Oblast, Russia. The claim placed a third country's soldiers in the fighting in the Kursk area, where Ukraine has operated since its 2024 offensive there.
Pressure around Pokrovsk
In Donetsk Oblast, the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian military news site DeepStateUA both reported on 3 November 2024 that Russia had captured the settlement of Vyshneve. Russian troops were advancing towards Hryhorivka to the west. Vyshneve lay within the area of the Pokrovsk offensive, a Russian operation aimed at capturing the cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in western Donetsk Oblast. That offensive had gathered pace after Russia captured Prohres on 18 and 19 July 2024, a turning point northwest of Avdiivka, which Russia had taken in February 2024.
The agreement between Russian and Ukrainian sources on Vyshneve was notable: both sides reported the same change of control.
A diplomatic signal from Asia
Farther afield, on 4 November 2024 the Indonesian Navy and the Russian Navy began their first ever joint military exercise, in the Java Sea. It was a military contact between Russia and a state in Southeast Asia.
Taken together
The reports of those days describe a conflict stretching across several settings: missile strikes on a Ukrainian city, ground advances in Donetsk Oblast, fighting in Russia's Kursk Oblast involving North Korean troops by Ukraine's account, and naval exercises in the Java Sea. The eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv had been a theatre of operations since the war began in February 2022, and the early-November reports show that theatre still producing territorial change, while the Zaporizhzhia strike showed civilians in cities away from the immediate front remaining exposed.
