Ukraine-Russia war latest: Moscow planning more acts of sabotage in Europe, EU foreign policy chief warns

While the Polish government’s warnings are stark on fears of hybrid attack from Russia, even communities closest to Ukraine are still catching up on civil defence preparedness.

“We are at the beginning of the process of building civil resilience and the resilience of the state to threats,” said Miroslaw Sokal, head of resident safety for the city of Lublin, 90 km west of Dorohusk.

“We have to remember that over the past 40 years we thought we would be living in peace.”

He said, given the lack of more solid infrastructure, Poles should respect one minimal rule when there’s an air threat: get inside and put two walls between them and any window.

Sawa, the Dorohusk mayor, said villagers typically live in individual homes with basements and that is the obvious place to hide in case of air threats. “If I don’t have a basement myself, my neighbor likely does,” he said.

But people on the streets of Dorohusk seemed more confused about their options in case of a real attack.

“For now, I sleep well at night, so I don’t really hear it,” said Irena Popek, a woman in her 80s. If planes are coming, she said, her basement was not an option as it was flooded.

“I simply have nowhere to hide, and that’s it.”

Renata Pastuszo, a local shop employee, said she continued working through the recent siren alarm because it’s better to keep a positive spirit in front of the Russian threat.

Krzysztof Rulka, another resident, complained that alerts were now coming too often, leaving people confused about their meaning.

“If someone told me that a drone was going to explode in the center of Dorohusk, then I would know what to do,” he said.

“But this kind of confusion — there’s an air attack somewhere in Ukraine — well, what am I supposed to do now? Run to Germany?”

Schools in Poland now discuss with students”practically every day” how to stay safe, said Jaroslaw Wójcicki, the Dorohusk school’s director.

The school had to be evacuated once so far and Wójcicki showed the two rooms in the basement of the school building where the kids took cover. Windows had been boarded up to avoid glass shards hurting anyone in case of an explosion.

“The older children had no problem at all, without showing any particular emotion,” the director said. “You could see a little fear among the younger children, but they were well looked after by their teachers.”

Wójcicki is responsible for the safety of hundreds of children who travel from nearby villages to attend school in Dorohusk, and his voice wavered as he described the enormity of the task.

Poland’s defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz visited the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing on 22 September and announced new air defence elements were being brought to the border region. He added that Patriot batteries were deployed in the two Polish regions bordering Ukraine, including the one where Dorohusk is located.

The identities of 258,989 Russian military personnel killed in the war have been confirmed by Russian independent media outlet Mediazona.

More than 10,000 names were added in less than two weeks, roughly twice the usual rate, an investigation by Mediazona as well as the BBC’s Russian service, has confirmed.

The surge was largely driven by a leaked list of bodies exchanged between Russia and Ukraine, with names added only after journalists independently verified the identities through official registries.

The figure is likely a significant underestimate of Russia’s actual military deaths. Mediazona said its tally is based on publicly available information, including obituaries, posts by relatives, regional media reports and statements from local authorities.

As of 21 September, the database included 7,692 officers from the Russian military and other security agencies, as well as about 20,500 mobilised soldiers.

Mediazona said the latter figure is also a substantial underestimate, as recent obituaries increasingly omit details about how soldiers were recruited.

Ukraine’s General Staff estimated on Sunday that Russia had suffered 1,528,970 personnel losses since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

Intelligence reports show Russia is planning more ⁠acts of sabotage in Europe, EU foreign policy chief ⁠Kaja ​Kallas ⁠said on Monday.

“We need ⁠to be vigilant ​because ⁠we see ‌in the intelligence that Russia is ‌planning more ‌sabotage acts and attacks against our ⁠democracy – to divide our society, to intimidate our societies (into) refraining to help Ukraine,” Kallas ‌said before a ​meeting of ‌EU defence ⁠ministers in ⁠Brussels.

Three times in one day, phones lit up across this Polish border community with a warning: A drone or a missile could cross from Ukraine, and residents should stay vigilant in case they might need to take cover.

Above the village of Dorohusk in eastern Poland, vapor trails cut across the pale blue sky and military helicopters rumbled overhead. Just 2km (1.24 miles) away, traffic at the border crossing into Ukraine was suspended three times, and staff were even evacuated once.

They reflected a new reality along Poland’s eastern frontier, where the war in Ukraine — now four and a half years old — has felt increasingly close.

The anxiety intensified after two Russian drones exploded on the Ukrainian side of the Dorohusk-Yahodyn crossing in the early hours of 13 September. The explosions could clearly be heard in Dorohusk.

“There is new restlessness and fear because you could hear those explosions very well on that night in our village,” said Wojciech Sawa, the Dorohusk mayor. “We had never had something like that before. This was the first time the sirens wailed.”

The Russian defence ⁠ministry said on Monday its ⁠forces ​had ⁠struck a ⁠cargo ship ​carrying military ⁠goods to ‌the port of ‌Odesa in ‌an overnight ⁠attack, which also hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure, data and logistic centres, ‌as ​well ‌as ⁠a military ⁠airport.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said a drone had struck a high-rise apartment building, triggering a fire in an eastern suburb and wounding one person. Emergency crews extinguished the blaze.

Drones hit areas near a kindergarten and a playground ‌in two districts, Klitschko said on Telegram, and other areas in the city also ​suffered damage, though no casualties were reported.

Drone debris had triggered a fire ‌in another Kyiv district, he said.

Ukraine’s largest mobile ⁠service provider told the Interfax Ukraine news agency that Russian forces had hit ⁠its headquarters in continued strikes on Ukrainian data centres and communications infrastructure. There were no casualties.

Russia’s defence ministry issued statements ‌saying its forces had struck ​two data centres in Kyiv, a logistics ‌hub in Odesa, as well as two cargo ​vessels headed for Odesa.

Both sides in the more than 4-1/2-year-old war deny targeting civilians.

A guided ⁠Russian aerial bomb injured 22 people, including ⁠children, ​as it ⁠struck an apartment building ⁠in Ukraine’s ​second-biggest ⁠city, Kharkiv ‌in the northeast, mayor Ihor ‌Terekhov said on ‌Telegram early on ⁠Monday.

In the capital, Kyiv, a Russian drone hit a petrol station, authorities in ‌the ​city said ‌on ⁠Telegram, without ⁠providing additional details.

Russian drones set ablaze a market outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on ⁠Sunday, killing two people, while three others died in strikes by Moscow’s forces in different regions and Kyiv itself also came under attack, local officials said.

Ukrainian prosecutors said the drone attack hit a market in Sofiiska Borshchahivka on the western outskirts of Kyiv, killing 2 people and injuring about 10.

Pictures posted online showed installations and vehicles on fire, with debris ⁠strewn on the ground.

In the capital, mayor Vitali Klitschko ​said ⁠nine people were injured, including a child. Six of the injured were being treated in hospital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried the latest attacks, ​saying the ⁠civilian targets made the acts unquestionably “terrorism”.

“Russia has ‌no military objective whatsoever in doing this,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X. “It is purely an attempt to break people and inflict as much harm as possible on our society.”