News
In this week’s summary:
- The escalation of Russian attempts to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk salient has led to significant equipment losses for Moscow.
- Increasing evidence points to widespread looting by Russian troops in the Kursk Region.
- Russian units are amassing strength within Kurakhove and moving north along the Kurakhove reservoir.
- A Russian column advanced to the outskirts of Kupiansk, suffering significant casualties, with some troops captured.
- The BBC Russian Service and Mediazona have reported greater increases in confirmed Russian military casualties than at any time since the start of the war.
- Pro-Russian military blogger Kirill Fedorov reported that a Ukrainian FPV drone brought down a Ka-52 helicopter.
- The Biden administration plans to fully utilize allocated military aid funds for Ukraine ahead of president-elect Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
- The EU has approved joint arms procurement financing for the first time — including supplies designated for the Ukrainian army.
Situation at the front
This week, intense combat was concentrated in Russia’s Kursk Region and around Kurakhove in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region. A new offensive by Russian forces on the Kursk salient took place amid reports that Vladimir Putin is aiming to push Ukrainian troops out of internationally recognized Russian territory by the time of Donald Trump's inauguration as U.S. President on Jan. 20, 2025. The offensive, however, has not resulted in any significant gains to date. Ukrainian units have released footage (1, 2, 3) that shows them successfully repelling Russian attacks. According to estimates by Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance specialist Kriegsforcher, these actions have already cost the Russian Armed Forces at least 77 pieces of equipment.
Meanwhile, Kursk residents displaced by the fighting have reported poor evacuation coordination by the Russian authorities and a lack of local government support (1, 2). There is growing evidence of looting by Russian troops in the area, recently acknowledged by former Kursk Region governor Roman Starovoit and by a Russian soldier who shared accounts of looting with The Insider.
Near Kurakhove, Russian forces managed to capture Ilinka on the northern shore of the Kurakhove reservoir and began amassing strength within Kurakhove’s city limits. The reservoir's dam has been destroyed, complicating the movement of Ukrainian equipment downstream along the Vovcha River. Despite the Ukrainians successfully repelling mechanized assaults south of the city — including one in which a Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 tank halted an entire enemy column — Russian forces managed to dangerously narrow the neck of the southeastern “pocket” of the Kurakhove salient.
In the Kupiansk sector, a Russian column made an unexpected and largely unopposed advance for several kilometers past the frontline, deploying troops on the outskirts of Kupiansk. This force, however, was soon neutralized, with the remaining Russian soldiers surrendering to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Ukrainian open source intelligence project (OSINT) DeepState attributed the event to a lapse in the AFU’s defenses — a problem which was quickly resolved.
Mutual strikes and sabotage
The Ukrainian Air Force Command reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) intercepting 262 out of 558 Russian-launched drones over the past week — including Iranian-designed Shahed UAVs. An additional 260 drones were “radar-lost,” meaning they were downed by electronic warfare or turned out to be decoys. On the night of Nov. 10, a record 145 drones were launched, one of which (a decoy drone known as “Parodiya,” lit. “Parody”) crashed in Moldova. Additionally, 10 missiles of various types were launched over the week, seven of which were intercepted. On the night of Nov. 13, Kyiv endured a combined Russian missile and drone strike for the first time in 73 days.
During the week, Russian forces targeted Ukrainian cities' civilian infrastructure using drones, missiles, and guided bombs:
- On Nov. 9, a drone strike on Odesa left one person dead and 13 injured, damaging residential buildings, private homes, warehouses, and vehicles. In Mykolaiv, a private home was destroyed and a four-story building damaged, resulting in five deaths. A strike on Zaporizhzhia partially destroyed a two-story residential building, killing one person and injuring 21.
- On Nov. 11, a ballistic missile struck an apartment building in Kryvyi Rih, killing three children and their mother and injuring 14 others. Local authorities declared a day of mourning in the city following the strike.
- In Kharkiv, strikes by the “Molniya”-type first-person view (FPV) drone injured three people on Nov. 11 (1, 2) and four more on Nov. 14.
- On the night of Nov. 15, Odesa was again struck by drones, causing damage to residential buildings, a church, an educational institution, and multiple vehicles, while also forcing the shutdown of a city boiler plant. One person was killed and ten were injured as a result of the strikes.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) shooting down 255 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over Russian territory. On Nov. 10, 32 drones were intercepted over the Moscow Region during one of the largest-ever raids on the Russian capital. Over the course of the week, Ukrainian forces targeted the following known sites:
- The Alexin Chemical Plant in the Tula Region, reportedly hitting a powder production facility.
- A military training ground in the Rostov Region, where several tents caught fire — though casualties remain unknown.
- An ammunition depot — the 1060th Centre for Material-Technical Support, formerly known as the 120th GRAU arsenal — in the Bryansk Region, with Ukraine’s General Staff reporting that the strike resulted in two fires on the territory of the facility.
- A cluster of Russian Pskov Division paratroopers in the Zaporizhzhia Region.
- An oil depot in the Belgorod Region.
- A military facility in Belgorod, injuring several conscripts.
- The Krymsk airfield in Krasnodar Krai, with no confirmed damage reported.
Losses
The BBC Russian Service and the independent Russian publication Mediazona, in collaboration with a team of volunteers, have updated their tally of Russian military casualties in the war, based on open-source reports. The updated figure indicates that at least 78,329 Russian soldiers have died since Moscow unleashed its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The current rate of increase in confirmed Russian deaths at the front is the highest recorded since the war began.
Pro-Russian military blogger Kirill Fedorov reported that a Ukrainian FPV drone struck a Ka-52 attack helicopter on Nov. 7, resulting in the death of its commander, while the navigator survived. Russian pro-war channels had previously mentioned the helicopter crash without providing details on how exactly it occurred.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced it had opened an investigation into yet another execution of a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW). The video capturing the incident, widely circulated by Russian pro-war channels, shows an unarmed soldier lying on the ground being shot with an automatic weapon. Ukrainian volunteer Serhiy Sternenko reported on a separate instance of Ukrainian POWs being executed, sharing a video that appears to depict at least two unarmed Ukrainian soldiers being shot by Russian forces in the Kursk Region.
The Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU reported that Vladimir Novikov (call sign “Beliy,” lit. “White”), commander of assault unit of the 110th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, was involved in a brawl with military prosecutors at a bar in Donetsk, although “war correspondent” Andrey Filatov initially claimed Novikov had been arrested over a conflict with a drug cartel. A follow-up inspection of the Russian brigade's base reportedly revealed Russian soldiers being held in dog kennels, where they were subjected to torture and had their salaries seized. A number of such hostages, also after being held in kennels, had reportedly been “zeroed out” — a term used within the Russian military to denote extrajudicial executions.
Weapons and military vehicles
The U.S. has announced that $7.1 billion worth of authorized funds remains to be distributed as military aid to Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), along with $2.2 billion under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). All these funds are expected to be utilized by Jan. 20, 2025 — prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump. In the near term, 500 surface-to-air missiles for Patriot and NASAMS systems will be supplied. The Biden administration also plans to seek further military funding for Ukraine from Congress for 2025 and has lifted a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine to perform repairs and maintenance on U.S.-supplied weapons — including F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defense systems.
On Nov. 14, the European Union approved €300 million in funding for joint arms procurement by its member states for the first time, with part of the supplies designated for Ukraine. In an interview with Ukraine's European Pravda, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, pledged that 1.5 million artillery rounds will be supplied to Ukraine by the end of 2024. To date, 980,000 rounds have been delivered, although it took 21 months to reach this total — 9 months longer than the originally promised 12-month timeline set out in March 2023.
OSINT researcher Jompy presented updated estimates of Russian military stockpiles. Using satellite images of storage bases, he reported that stocks in key categories such as tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and artillery systems are now below 50% of their pre-war levels, with only a small fraction believed to be in good operational condition. Nevertheless, another OSINT researcher, Just BeCause, noted that a critical shortage of Russian military equipment is unlikely to occur before mid-2025 or early 2026.
Meanwhile, Russia’s state-owned defense corporation Rostec announced the delivery of new batches of Su-35S and Su-57 jet fighters to the Russian Aerospace Forces. Russia’s air defense system supplies, however, appear to be strained, as a Tor-M2KM surface-to-air missile system originally intended to be shipped to Armenia was recently spotted operating in the Kursk Region. Russia’s tank stocks are also being replenished using Soviet-era props from the Mosfilm film studio, with the studio’s head Karen Shakhnazarov reporting to Vladimir Putin that it had donated 28 T-55 tanks and eight PT-76 tanks to the MoD last year. North Korea was also confirmed to have supplied military equipment (rather than simply ammunition) to its new ally for the first time — long-range 170-mm M1989 Koksan self-propelled cannons, similar to the Soviet-made 2S7 Pion, were observed on a railway convoy in Russia.
Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) reported that even primitive Russian decoy drones, such as the aforementioned “Parodiya” (“Parody”), are using foreign components sourced from China, the U.S., Switzerland, and Taiwan.
A recent investigation by The Insider revealed that advanced radio-technical equipment used for developing and producing electronic warfare (EW) systems is making its way into Russia through a network of companies based in Kazakhstan, with components originating from Germany, France, and the U.S.
Previous weekly summary (Nov. 2 to Nov. 8, 2024):
Weekly Ukraine war summary: Russian volunteers reported to last “two weeks to a month” at the front as Moscow mounts offensive on Kurakhove
Click here to read all of The Insider's weekly war summaries.