Russian drone reaches Ukrainian border post near Poland

“ A village of Starovoitove, near the border with Poland, was hit (...). The impact of the explosion damaged the building of the control post located at the entrance of the terminal”, wrote the interim governor of the Volhynia region, Roman Romaniuk, on the social network Telegram.

There's no record of dead or wounded so far, the interim governor added.

The village of Starovoitove is about two kilometres from the Polish border, near the Ukrainian border post of Yagodyn.

Polish Minister of Defence, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, also referred to this incident in a message published on social network X, advancing that the country was ready to repel eventual aggression.

“There was no violation of Polish airspace. Our air defense systems and our planes were ready to react,” he said.

Moscow has not yet spoken about this.

In recent weeks, Russia has launched several attacks near the Ukrainian border with Poland, which has led to the condemnation of Warsaw and the European allies.

In early September, a Russian drone struck a convoy bound for Warsaw in the same region, an attack that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk classified as an escalation.

The Kremlin (Russian presidency) then declared that it would continue to attack targets throughout Ukrainian territory.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, incidents with Russian drones, missiles, planes and helicopters near or within Polish airspace have been frequent.

Just last week, a Russian military helicopter violated Polish airspace after taking off the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the northern border of Poland.

Poland, neighbouring Ukraine and member of the European Union and NATO, serves as the main transit route for Western military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv.

These attacks arise at a time when several European countries and the European Union have warned that Moscow may be planning offensive actions against Kyiv's allies.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin removed the possibility of conflict with Europe.

“We are not preparing for any kind of conflict with Europe,” Putin said in statements to journalists on the margins of the International Forum on Culture in St. Petersburg.

The day before, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte considered “very unlikely” a Russian invasion against any country of the Atlantic Alliance, but warned of the need to avoid naiveties in the face of Russian military reinforcement.

“ It is better for them [the Russians] not to do so, because they know that we are prepared and that they would not be victorious,” Rutte warned, commenting on the conclusions of a report by Danish military intelligence services (FE) on the Russian threat.

The FE has assessed it as unlikely that Moscow would see the advantage of invading a neighbouring NATO member country, without dispelling that hypothesis.

It also warned of an increasing but still low risk of Russia's limited military actions against allies and the intensification of hybrid attacks in the coming months, motivated by Western support for Ukraine.