What did 28 October 2024 reveal about a widening war?
A look back at the reports surrounding 28 October 2024, when pressure on the front, new foreign involvement and Western financing shaped the picture for Ukraine.
What did the situation look like on 28 October 2024, as Ukraine entered another autumn of full-scale war? The reports from the days just before that date point to three overlapping pressures: a strained front line in Donetsk Oblast, the arrival of a new foreign force on Russia's side, and a financial lifeline from Ukraine's partners.
A front line under strain
On 24 October 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that Russian forces had made significant advances in the strategic city of Selydove and predicted that it could be captured within a few days. The day before, DeepState, a Ukrainian military news page, had reported heavy fighting around Selydove, while the Russian Defence Ministry claimed the capture of the villages of Mykolaivka and Serebrianka in Donetsk Oblast. DeepState is the outlet behind DeepStateMap.Live, an open-source interactive map of military operations that a volunteer-led organisation created on 24 February 2022, the day of the invasion, and updates regularly.
The competing accounts matter in themselves. One side forecast a loss; the other announced gains. Ukraine's own assessment was blunt about the direction of travel around Selydove.
A new foreign presence
The widening of the war was also visible in Kursk Oblast. On 23 October 2024, the U.S. State Department said it had confirmed evidence that North Korean troops were present in Russia and preparing to travel to the battlefield in Ukraine. South Korea said Pyongyang had promised to send up to 10,000 troops. By 25 October, Ukraine reported that the first North Korean units had entered active war zones in Kursk Oblast, reportedly under the command of Russia's Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov.
The sequence was rapid: confirmation of presence, a figure for the promised deployment, then a report of units in the field, all within three days.
Money from partners
On the financial side, the U.S. Defense Department finalised on 23 October 2024 a US$20 billion loan to Ukraine for military and economic support. It formed part of a collective US$50 billion loan among G7 members. Set against the battlefield reports, the loan showed support for Ukraine being arranged at the same time as Russia's side drew in outside manpower.
Civilians still in the line of fire
The human cost continued far from the front. On 25 October 2024, a Russian drone struck a residential building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi District, killing one person and injuring five. The same day, a Russian missile attack on a residential area in Dnipro killed five people and injured 21.
Wider echoes
The war's effects were also being measured abroad. On 23 October 2024, Germany's Ifo Institute reported a 13% fall in births nationally between 2021 and 2023, and up to 17.5% in eastern Germany, attributing the decline to several factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian war and high inflation. That day a Munich court also brought charges against a Russian man over the April stabbing of two Ukrainian soldiers in Murnau am Staffelsee, Bavaria.
At the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, also on 23 October 2024, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi met China's President Xi Jinping, their first bilateral meeting in five years and one that followed the 2020 border skirmishes between their troops.
What the picture added up to
Taken together, the reports around 28 October 2024 describe a war in which each side was drawing on outside support: Ukraine on a large G7-backed loan, Russia on North Korean troops. Meanwhile the fight for Selydove and strikes on Kyiv and Dnipro showed that the pressure on both the front and the civilian population had not eased.
