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Who was arming and fortifying around Ukraine?
Summary
A look back at 2 November 2022 and the days before it, when allegations of foreign arms supplies and border and alert measures spread across the region.
What did the war look like from outside Ukraine on 2 November 2022? The day's reports pointed to a conflict whose effects reached well beyond the front line, shaping defence decisions in several neighbouring countries and drawing in outside suppliers.
On 2 November 2022, the United States said that North Korea was "secretly supplying" artillery shells to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine. The claim put a third state into the picture of Russia's war effort, and it was a US assertion rather than something Pyongyang had confirmed.
Fortifying the border
The same day, Poland's Minister of National Defence, Mariusz Błaszczak, announced the construction of a barrier along the border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Poland believed Russia would use that border to transport African and Asian immigrants illegally into Europe. The reasoning was Warsaw's own, and it showed a neighbour treating its frontier with Russia as a security matter.
Spillover in the days before
The preceding days had already shown how close the war was to other states. On 31 October 2022, Norway's Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, announced that the country's military alert level would rise the next day. He cited military drone sightings near offshore oil rigs over the previous few weeks.
On the same date, a Russian cruise missile that was reportedly shot down by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft system crashed on the outskirts of Naslavcea, Moldova. According to the Moldovan government, no casualties were reported, though some houses were damaged by the blast.
The pressure inside Ukraine
Inside Ukraine, the picture on 31 October 2022 was one of continued strikes on infrastructure. Russian forces again damaged critical infrastructure in Kyiv, leaving parts of the capital without energy and water. Other energy facilities were damaged in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Cherkasy.
Taken together, these reports show a war with several layers: strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, debris and drones affecting neighbouring states, and governments in Warsaw, Oslo and Chisinau reacting in their own ways. The US allegation about North Korean shells added a further dimension, concerning where Russia might be sourcing its munitions.
