Russia intensifies drone attacks near Polish border, Poland activates reinforced mode

Russia has once again attacked NATO's doors. The recent campaign against border crossings between Ukraine and its allies adds a new blow this Sunday. The Polish Prime Minister has reported that a Moscow drone attack has hit a gas station or land near the service station in Ukraine, two kilometers from the border with Poland, a member state of the EU and the Atlantic Alliance. It has also impacted the depot of a freight train on a siding, he added.

“Russian escalation is becoming a fact and examples are getting closer and closer to the Polish border,” stressed the Conservative Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, before a meeting of the Government Security Center (RCB). “The coming weeks and months will be a time of very intensified actions by Russia,” he said while announcing that, from now on, Poland will operate “in reinforced mode.”

The Polish Minister of Defense had reported hours before the attack with a group of Geran-5 drones, unmanned devices that have greater range and speed. “One of them hit 1 km from the border with Poland, another 5 km,” wrote Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz on the X social network.

Polish and Ukrainian media had reported on Sunday morning that a drone had hit the locomotive of a train covering the route between kyiv and Warsaw, near the Dorohusk-Yagodzin pass. “Putin is escalating the conflict,” Radoslaw Sikorski, deputy prime minister and head of Polish diplomacy, had tweeted, linking to a news story with that information. After the detail about the impact locations, Tusk added however: “We do not confirm any other information.”

Ukrzaliznytsia, the Ukrainian railway company, had reported that the incident had caused no injuries. Trains were until relatively recently one of the safest ways to travel in the country, despite the war, but they have increasingly become a target of Russian attacks.

“We are constantly monitoring air threats, guaranteeing the movement of trains and adopting maximum security measures for passengers and railway employees,” the railway operator reported after the attack. He then announced that the railway network was being subjected to a “systemic attack” throughout the country. “Our surveillance centers and our employees are at high alert levels.”

Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister, was among the passengers on a train that traveled between Kiev and Warsaw shortly before the attack, as he himself said in

In recent weeks, the number of incidents near Ukraine's borders with its neighbors has increased. This Friday, Tusk revealed that cooperation between the authorities of both countries had neutralized that same day a “direct threat” at a border crossing, of which he did not give further details.

In recent weeks, Moscow has twice attacked the Ukrainian side of a border crossing on the Danube with Romania, also a member of the EU and NATO. Incidents have also multiplied this summer near the borders with Moldova, which aspires to join the community bloc. The last one, this week, killed and injured several civilians with a Sahed drone launched against the Starokozache border post, in the Odessa region, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Tusk has long warned of the imminent threat of a Russian attack against NATO on the Eastern flank. Moscow has intensified its operations against the Alliance in the gray zone, a space of confrontation below the threshold of open armed conflict. Sabotage actions, cyberattacks, disinformation and espionage have escalated to a dangerous level, with incidents that exceed the limit of what is considered hybrid, such as the failed drone bomb attack in August in Leipzig.

Drone incursions into the airspace of states bordering Ukraine or Russia have intensified in recent months. Explosive devices have fallen in the Baltic republics, some of Ukrainian origin diverted by Russian electronic warfare equipment. This Sunday, Lithuania has suspended operations at the Vilnius airport and NATO has activated fighter jets due to the possible presence of a drone in the country's airspace.

Romania has also seen an increase in the number of cases in which a Russian projectile ends up on its side of the border, amid Moscow's large-scale attacks with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and long-range unmanned systems.

Warsaw systematically activates its anti-aircraft defenses when Russia launches this type of bombing against Ukraine and its air forces are in a permanent state of surveillance. They also did so in the early hours of this Sunday and after the operation, in which F-16 planes, helicopters and the SAAB aerial reconnaissance plane participated, the Minister of Defense reported that “no violation of Polish airspace has been recorded.”

Tusk Warning

Polish authorities translate the escalation as an attempt by Moscow to weaken the allies' will to continue their economic and military support to the invaded country. “We knew that in the Russian plan there would be an attempt to disorganize, paralyze and perhaps destroy the border crossings with Ukraine,” said Tusk, who had already publicly anticipated these actions on Friday.

Also on Friday, Tusk said that CIA Director John Ratcliffe had warned him on Thursday that Poland and Europe must prepare for different scenarios. "In the last few hours, I have received a fairly detailed report directly from the director of the CIA about possible incidents in the coming months; and this is precisely what I have been saying and warning for many months," he stressed that day. Ratcliffe made a surprise trip to Moscow at the end of August. Anglo-Saxon media claim that the head of US intelligence warned Moscow to prevent it from attacking NATO partners.

The leader insists that Russia is testing the limits and response of the alliance, to cross the red lines imminently. This Sunday he said that, together with his Foreign Minister, they will reflect on how to mobilize allies. “There is no doubt that we must be prepared for a joint reaction,” he stressed.