Battlefield situation ‘challenging’ and ‘trending towards escalation,’ Syrskyi says

The situation on the front lines is “challenging” and “trending towards escalation,” Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Nov. 9.
“The situation remains challenging and is trending towards escalation. The enemy, leveraging its numerical advantage, continues offensive operations, concentrating its efforts primarily in the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions,” Syrskyi said in a post on Facebook.
“We have numerous reports about the preparation of North Korean soldiers to participate in combat operations alongside Russian forces,” he added without providing further details.
Syrskyi was reporting what he had told General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s top commander in Europe, in a phone call earlier in the day.
According to a Bloomberg analysis published on Nov. 1, Ukraine has lost 1,146 square kilometers of its own territory since the launch of the Kursk Oblast incursion in early August, with the week up until Nov. 1 reported as the worst in terms of lost territory in all of 2024.
On Nov. 2, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Ukraine was facing “one of the most powerful” Russian offensives since the start of the all out war.
Over autumn, large chunks of Ukrainian territory, sometimes including entire cities, have been lost on a near-daily basis in southern Donetsk Oblast, while Russian forces have also made operationally significant gains near Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, as well as on their own soil in Kursk Oblast.