A Russian drone struck a scheduled passenger minibus in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the morning of 16 September, killing and injuring people on board, the oblast military administration reported. The vehicle was running an intercity route when the drone reached it on the open road. Prosecutors opened a criminal case, and the head of the oblast council called the attack a cynical strike on people going about their day.

Five killed on the Pokrov to Dnipro run

Five people died at the scene, and doctors are treating at least seven injured, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration, Oleksandr Handzha, said. Russian forces struck Nikopol district with an FPV drone, damaging a route minibus that was travelling on the highway, the Prosecutor General's Office said.

Mykola Lukashuk, who heads the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Council, wrote that the strike was aimed and cynical.

"Russians cynically struck a passenger bus. Just a minibus in which people were travelling on their own business," he wrote.

The photograph Handzha published shows the windows torn out along one side of the white van, with blood running down the panel below them. In Lukashuk's image of the front end, the destination board behind the cracked windshield reads Pokrov, via Nikopol, to Dnipro, three towns strung along the same road.

The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast prosecutor's office opened proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which covers violations of the laws and customs of war, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

Drones had also attacked the district center and the Marhanets community in the same region, damaging an apartment building without hurting anyone, the administration said.

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Buses on these roads have been hit all year

Nikopol district lies on the Dnipro River directly across from Russian-occupied territory, which puts its roads inside the range of short-range drones. A drone hit a city bus in central Nikopol in April, killing four people and injuring 17, after which the mayor cut services and ran the rest off the fixed schedule. In June, a drone struck a minibus in Nikopol, killing two people and injuring 12, among them two 12-year-old girls, and in August a drone burned out another route minibus elsewhere in the district, injuring at least seven passengers.

The pattern runs past this district. A drone hit a bus near Dnipro in May, injuring six people including a child and a pregnant woman, and war analysts have assessed that Russian forces use harm to civilians as an instrument of the war in southern Ukraine rather than as its by-product. 

An FPV drone, short for first-person view, sends a live video feed back to whoever is flying it. The operator watches the target grow in the frame and steers the drone into it. A bus in motion is a target that has to be chosen and followed. FPV models are not the only cheap weapon over these roads: Russia also flies Molniya strike drones, which reach further and are switching to digital video that Ukraine's current detectors cannot pick up.

The Prosecutor General's Office documented more than 11,000 attacks by short-range drones on civilians, medics, rescuers, and police, with criminal cases rising from 2,427 in 2024 to 6,771 in 2025 and another 2,010 opened in the first four months of 2026. 

Gas stations across Kyiv Oblast will receive access to a military air-awareness system to help them respond more quickly to Russian drone attacks, Kyiv Oblast military administration head Tymur Tkachenko said on 15 September.

The move comes as Russian forces increasingly target fuel infrastructure during their attacks on Ukrainian cities. Two gas stations were hit in Kyiv on 15 September, killing one person and injuring 11, while at least three other Ukrnafta stations in the capital have been struck since 10 September.

The new system will allow designated gas-station employees to see real-time information about the movement of Russian aerial targets rather than relying only on the general air-raid alert. This should give stations more time to suspend operations, protect employees, and move customers away from danger.

Gas stations are becoming a recurring target

The attacks on Kyiv’s gas stations are part of a broader pattern. More than 300 gas stations across Ukraine have been attacked since the current wave began, according to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry, with strikes increasingly reaching deeper into the country.

In Kyiv, Russian forces have repeatedly used drones against fuel stations over the past week. The 15 September attack hit two more stations during a wider wave of around 200 drones launched against Ukraine.

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The targeting of fuel infrastructure adds another dimension to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s civilian supply system. Gas stations are not only businesses but critical points in the country’s transportation and fuel network, making repeated attacks capable of affecting both public safety and civilian mobility.

Tkachenko said the new air-awareness access is intended to give businesses “maximum available tools” to detect threats earlier and react in time.

He also urged drivers to follow gas-station employees’ instructions during air raids, as the facilities adapt their operations to the growing threat.

Ukraine's former top commander has a warning for anyone betting that new gadgets will win the war, he wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the country's Commander-in-Chief until 2024 and now its ambassador to the UK, argues 2026 is a war of technologies and, no less, of the strategies and doctrines that must keep pace with them. Bolting modern tech onto an old Soviet playbook, he says, drove mobilization into a dead end.

A year ago, Zaluzhnyi warned that Ukraine would need thousands of counter-drone systems and mass drone production to cope with the growing role of UAVs in war. A year later, those capabilities still aren't there at the scale he called for, mobilization has hit the dead end he now describes, and the four measures he proposed have not kept pace with how quickly drones are spreading.

Drones are already cheap, widespread, and shaping the war, and the front has gone static, Zaluzhnyi writes, while Russian strikes keep reaching railways and fuel stations far behind it.

This is no longer a drone war

The drones filling headlines no longer exist on their own, Zaluzhnyi writes. They have evolved into more familiar weapon types, cheaper and more effective—anyone still treating drones as a stand-alone class is about three years behind. Fixating on individual gadgets, he argues, misses the real contest: strategy and doctrine.

He reaches back to World War I for the danger he sees, running the line from Verdun and the Somme to Robotyne and Bakhmut. Before that war, soldiers in one army marched in bright red trousers that were supposed to help against repeating rifles, machine guns, and long-range artillery, and later against tanks and aircraft.

Today's faith in old security guarantees, he warns, is that same proud symbol worn onto a modern battlefield.

"The red trousers taught them nothing," he writes of those still moving tanks and artillery toward the fight by yesterday's logic.

New weapons, old strategy

The war has surrendered itself to marketers and wheeler-dealers, Zaluzhnyi writes—people who, without understanding or strategy, stoke it for quick profit while flaunting the pace of technological progress. Trying to retake land with Soviet methods and new weapons drove mobilization into a dead end, and fewer and fewer people were willing to take the one chance it offered.

"Damn marketing that kills," he adds.

The way out, he argues, is to treat technology as a new weapon, build tactics around it, and only then reshape the force.

That is what he calls doctrine, built through resource and technological alliances into a strategy for victory. Ukraine and Russia, he writes, have become real-time testing grounds.

What he warned a year ago

In September 2025, Zaluzhnyi named the four fights Ukraine had to win to survive mass drone warfare: counter-drone systems at scale, state-level drone production, integrated battlefield networks, and channeling tech talent into defense industries.

The counter-drone systems he put first are still short of the scale he warned Ukraine would need. Mobilization, he writes, has hit a dead end, and marketers—not the doctrine he calls for—are setting the pace.

Russia struck a fourth Ukrainian pharmaceutical warehouse in two weeks on 14 September, setting fire to the Odesa depot of medicine distributor BaDM, Ekonomichna Pravda reported. Russian forces hit it during an attack they ran across the country through the night. 

The fourth depot, and what Russia did to it

The BaDM complex stands on the edge of Odesa. The strike started a fire on the grounds, and the State Emergency Service worked at the site. It left significant damage to the storage buildings.

Preliminarily, nobody was hurt, sources on the pharmaceutical market told Ekonomichna Pravda. BaDM is one of the biggest wholesalers moving medicines to Ukrainian pharmacies.

The three depots Russia hit before it

• Russia opened the run on 3 September, when it damaged the Biokon logistics complex in Boryspil raion, Kyiv Oblast. That site counts as the country's largest specialized pharmaceutical warehouse.
• Overnight on 8 September, Russian forces attacked the Kyiv warehouse of Optima-Pharm with two ballistic missiles. They had already destroyed that site, which belongs to one of the largest distributors, in 2025.
• On 13 September, Russian forces struck Universal Logistic, the second-largest medicine warehouse in Ukraine. Four specialized sites in two weeks is a pattern, and Russia now hits medicine storage as it has hit food, construction materials, and parcels.

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The attack the Odesa strike came in

Russia launched 108 strike drones from 18:00 on 13 September, Ukraine's Air Force said. The wave carried Shahed-type drones, among them jet-powered ones, Gerbera drones, and Parodiya decoys. Air defense downed or suppressed 85 of them by 08:00. Ukrainian forces recorded hits at seven locations, and the Air Force said the attack was still running when it published that count.

Russia is building large new production halls at the Tatarstan site where it assembles the Shahed/Geran-type attack drones it fires at Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian geospatial and satellite intelligence analyst Dnipro Osint reported, publishing satellite images of the work. At least five long buildings stand finished in the southern part of the Alabuga special economic zone, with internal roads and access ways laid around them and further construction under way. What the new halls are for is not known yet.

What the images show

Several of the large workshops in the zone's southern section are already complete, and several more sites are in active construction, the analyst said. Laid roadways, and the outlines of additional buildings appear beside the finished rows, and he published the coordinates of the site along with the images.

The plant behind the nightly waves

The zone lies near the city of Yelabuga, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and has been one of Russia's principal military plants since 2023. It assembles the Shahed-type strike drones Russia calls Gerans, along with the Gerbera decoys flown alongside them, built at a tenth of a Shahed's cost to make Ukrainian air defense spend interceptors on empty airframes.

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Output has climbed with the attacks. Russia builds about 3,000 of the jet-powered version a month, by Ukrainian military intelligence's count, and has accumulated a reserve of more than 6,000 Gerans for large-scale attacks. The zone itself expanded by 340 hectares in a year, media reported in May.

Chinese firms supply the engines, navigation systems, and avionics, with Iran's role reduced to consultations and occasional deliveries, while Moscow claims the drones are fully localized. The workforce includes teenage students from the site's own Alabuga Polytech college and women recruited as labor migrants from African and Central Asian countries, some of whom were later sent to the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Struck repeatedly, expanding anyway

Ukrainian long-range drones have hit the zone's workshops more than once, including a confirmed strike on Shahed storage there. None of them disabled the facility, since Ukrainian long-range drones carry too little explosive to wreck industrial buildings. Russia has also fortified the site, installing more than 20 towers with heavy machine guns on its territory and perimeter.

Russia struck a passenger train just two kilometers from Ukraine’s border with Poland on 13 September, as Moscow continued a second day of attacks on Ukraine’s railway network and expanded strikes against transport and logistics infrastructure far from the front line.

Russia is increasingly using its expanding drone fleet to reach transport, logistics, industrial and civilian infrastructure deep inside Ukraine. Western regions, long considered safer because of their distance from the front, are now seeing strikes on railways and border crossings, making even civilian travel and routes out of the country increasingly dangerous.

The latest attack took place in Ukraine’s north-western Volyn Oblast, near the Yahodyn border crossing with Poland. According to Ukraine’s state railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia, a Russian drone struck the locomotive of a passenger train.

A monitoring team detected the threat in advance and warned the train crew, preventing casualties. The railway operator said trains to Warsaw and back were already running again after the strike, although with significant delays.

A gas station was also struck in a Russian drone strike near the Yahodyn crossing, causing a large fire, according to UNN, adding to the danger around a key transport route between Ukraine and Poland.

Poland also issued an air-raid alert for areas near the Ukrainian border, including Włodawa, Łęczyński and Świdnik counties and the cities of Chełm and Krasnystaw.

The attacks came alongside Russian strikes on railway infrastructure in several other parts of Ukraine.

Update: Diplomatic train may have been Russian drone’s target

Update 19:00: Ukrzaliznytsia later said a diplomatic train carrying security advisers from several EU member states and former European leaders, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had been at Yahodyn shortly before the strike. Another train at the station during the attack carried former CIA Director David Petraeus.

Ukrzaliznytsia said the Russian drone may have been targeting the diplomatic train, which departed earlier than scheduled as railway staff adjusted train movements in real time because of the ongoing threat of Russian strikes. The operator said it continues to change routes and schedules as tracks are damaged or blocked by attacks.

Russia targets railways across Ukraine

Ukrzaliznytsia said this was the second consecutive day of Russian attacks on the railway network.

On 12 September, Russian drones struck railway facilities in Lutsk, Volyn Oblast, including a passenger train, as well as Fastiv, Kyiv Oblast. Passengers were evacuated after the threat was detected.

Ukrzaliznytsia said its monitoring center and railway personnel remain on heightened alert as Russia continues targeting the network. Evacuations and diversions have caused delays on several routes, including services toward Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih.

Russia also attacked a railway infrastructure site in Vinnytsia Oblast on 13 September, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. 

Russia’s drone campaign is expanding

Russian attacks are increasingly reaching critical infrastructure and civilian areas across Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia struck energy facilities, railway sites, businesses and residential buildings during the latest wave of attacks, including missile and drone strikes on Odesa.

Zelenskyy said Russia had launched around 2,100 drones against Ukraine in the past week, alongside nearly 1,700 guided aerial bombs and 78 missiles.

He said Russia is using jet-powered Geran drones to “destroy the economy and destroy people’s lives.”

Russia has sharply increased its use of upgraded Geran attack drones in recent months, which are faster than earlier versions and can cover the long distances needed to strike targets deep inside Ukraine. Their growing speed and scale are putting additional pressure on Ukraine’s air-defense system, which has to detect and intercept large numbers of drones across the country.

“Russia’s terrorism is a common threat for many,” Zelenskyy said, arguing that the threat must be defeated in Ukraine rather than allowed to spread further into Europe.

Border crossings increasingly targeted

The strike near Yahodyn comes after Russia began targeting Ukrainian border crossings farther from the front line.

Since late August, Russian forces have struck at least five Ukrainian crossings with Moldova and NATO member Romania. The crossings handle civilian traffic, trade and logistics that are increasingly important to Ukraine as the war continues.

On 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing with Moldova, killing two civilians and injuring three others. One Russian drone entered Moldovan airspace and flew toward Romania, prompting NATO aircraft conducting air-policing duties to scramble.

Russia also struck the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Romanian border twice in early September.

The attacks prompted growing concern in Poland. On 10 September, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland expected Russia could target Ukrainian border crossings with Poland as Moscow expands its strikes against transport and logistics routes.

Tusk said Poland had received intelligence indicating that similar attacks could occur against crossings involving other countries. He also warned that Poland and Europe needed to prepare for different scenarios along Europe’s eastern flank.

The strike near Yahodyn came only three days after that warning.

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“Russia is trying to expand the geography of its terror”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia was deliberately expanding the geography of its attacks.

“Moscow tries to expand the geography of its terror,” Sybiha said, arguing that Russia is trying to turn the entire territory of Ukraine into a battlefield as it fails to achieve its objectives on the front.

He said Moscow was targeting “civilians, trains, and the infrastructure that keeps the country moving.”

Sybiha called for stronger air defenses, interceptors and counter-drone capabilities, as well as measures targeting Russia’s drone production and supply chains.

In a separate statement after the Yahodyn attack, Sybiha said Russia’s strikes near the Polish border were “not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders.”

“This is Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” he said, urging European countries to respond with stronger sanctions.

Attacks moving closer to NATO

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said members of his ministry had been stuck at the same Ukrainian-Polish border crossing only hours before the latest images emerged because of the Russian drone threat.

“Russia’s attacks are becoming more intense and moving ever closer to NATO and the EU,” Tsahkna said.

Poland expects Russia to target border crossings with Ukraine as Moscow expands its strikes on trade and logistics routes far from the front line, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on 10 September, according to Reuters.

The warning comes after Russia has already struck at least five Ukrainian border crossings with Moldova and NATO member Romania since late August. The attacks mark a significant escalation in Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s civilian transport, trade, and logistics infrastructure, far from the front line.

“Last night, thanks to cooperation between our services and their Ukrainian counterparts, a direct threat to one of the border crossings was averted,” Tusk said at a press conference in Bratislava, according to Reuters.

He said Poland expected Russia to take similar action against border crossings in other countries, including Poland.

Russia has significantly ramped up its aerial attacks across Ukraine in recent months, increasingly striking civilian transport, energy, industrial, and logistics infrastructure while deploying newer and more capable weapons. The expanded use of drones and missiles has also made these attacks harder to stop, allowing Russia to hit targets farther from the front line with greater frequency and inflict more damage and casualties.

Russia is striking Ukraine’s civilian travel and logistics routes

The Russian attacks have targeted crossings in Ukraine’s southern Odesa Oblast, hundreds of kilometers from the front line.

Four of the crossings hit since late August are on Ukraine’s border with Moldova, while another is on the Romanian border. The sites handle civilian traffic, trade, and logistics that have become increasingly important to Ukraine as the war continues.

On 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing with Moldova, killing two civilians and injuring three others. During the attack, one Russian drone entered Moldovan airspace and flew toward Romania, prompting NATO aircraft conducting air-policing duties to scramble.

Russian drones also struck the Orlivka ferry crossing on the Romanian border twice in early September.

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Far from any front line: Russia has hit at least five of Ukraine’s western border crossings with Moldova and NATO member since late August

Poland prepares for further escalation

Tusk said he had received a “fairly precise report” from the CIA about possible developments in the coming months, which he said aligned with warnings he had made previously.

“Poland and all of Europe need to be prepared for different possibilities,” Tusk said, including developments not only on the Russian-Ukrainian front but also along the EU’s eastern flank.

The warning comes as Russian strikes increasingly reach toward Ukraine’s borders with NATO and EU countries. The drone incursions into Moldovan and Romanian airspace during attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have already brought NATO forces into the response.

The latest attacks represent a broader shift in Russia’s targeting: Moscow is not only striking Ukraine’s cities and military infrastructure, but increasingly hitting the trade, transport, and civilian logistics routes that keep the country functioning during the war.

Moldova closed its airspace on the afternoon of 8 September and delayed the plane carrying Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Norway after a Russian drone crossed into the country, its government said in a statement to Reuters. The aircraft was cleared for takeoff once officials established that it had come down on Moldovan territory. Norway's prime minister described the episode as a near-miss, and neither government has said how close the drone came.

Russia runs three things at once along the EU's eastern frontier—mass drone attacks on Ukraine, drones crossing into Moldovan and Romanian airspace almost weekly, and strikes on the border checkpoints tying the three countries together—and states without interceptors can answer only by closing their skies.

What happened, and when

Moldova's National Army detected a Shahed-type drone entering from Ukraine at 16:20, the country's Defense Ministry reported. It flew toward Bender, a city in the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria, then turned toward the capital, Chișinău, by 16:32. At 16:37, it left the country over western Moldova and headed into eastern Romania, across the Prut river border.

Controllers restricted the airspace over central Moldova at 16:30. The same drone came back from the Romanian side, crossed the north of the country, and came down outside a village in the northwest, near the Romanian border, setting dry vegetation alight, according to the log. Nobody was hurt, and the airspace reopened at 17:39, more than an hour after it closed. The BBC's Ukrainian service placed the crash near a different northern village, without naming a source, so the exact spot is unsettled.

The violation fell in the window when Zelenskyy's aircraft was preparing to take off, Militarnyi reported, citing the ministry. The civilian airport he was leaving from suspended operations and the border service closed the nearby crossings, the outlet added. Three departures and four arrivals were delayed in all, Reuters said.

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How the plane and the drone crossed paths

Zelenskyy flies an Airbus A319 corporate jet, and the threat to it probably came from a jet-powered Geran drone that crossed Romanian and then Moldovan airspace at around 17:00 that day, Militarnyi wrote, publishing the drone's track from the monitoring channel Oko Hora. That fits the return leg in the army's log, though no authority has tied a specific aircraft to the delay.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told the broadcaster NRK the plane was almost hit as it prepared to leave, without naming his source. His office later described a danger recorded in Moldovan airspace that forced the delay. Norway's Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Zelenskyy recounted the details himself at a closed meeting in Oslo.

Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska attended the farewell ceremony for King Harald V, who died on 28 August. Around it, the president worked on air defense, meeting Støre and then executives of defense companies from partner countries about the FREYJA anti-ballistic missile program, which Norway's government casts as a cheaper alternative to the Patriot.

The next night, the border crossing

Overnight on 9 September, Russian drones struck the Starokozache crossing on Ukraine's border with Moldova, killing two people and injuring three. The dead were Ukrainians, and a Moldovan citizen was among the injured, Moldova's Foreign Ministry told the broadcaster TV8. Border guards reopened the crossing that afternoon.

Russia claimed it had struck the crossing because it was used for military logistics. Moldova's Foreign Ministry rejected that outright, saying no weapons move through its territory, and that the people crossing there are families, children with their mothers, and the elderly. It is one of the working crossings on the Odesa Oblast stretch of the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, where the heaviest traffic runs through Palanca and Giurgiulești.

Moldova's President Maia Sandu condemned both the strike and the Geran-type drone that had forced her country to close its airspace the day before, and said the events show Ukraine needs more air defense.

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The pattern, and Moldova's empty sky

Russia has hit at least five checkpoints on Ukraine's western borders since late August, four of them facing Moldova and one facing Romania, and the drone that struck the Kotlovyna crossing on 20 August flew in through Moldovan airspace. Euromaidan Press has covered part of that campaign, including burned food cargo near the Giurgiulești crossing in August. The State Border Guard Service has called such strikes an act of terrorism, because people are present at the crossings when they are hit.

In the air, Moldova can do little. It is still buying its first serious air defenses, so it restricts airspace and waits while Romania scrambles jets against the drones that reach its side. It logged three airspace breaches in nine days in August, and more than 100 drones were detected near Romania in four days that month.

A Russian strike drone hit the Kyiv premises of the television channels My-Ukraina and My-Ukraina+ in the middle of the day on 8 September, the channel reported. The main blow landed on the newsroom and the working offices while My-Ukraina was live on the national newscast. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged a response from Europe and the world.

During its ongoing all-out war, Russia runs a parallel campaign against the people who document it, jailing reporters as terrorists in the territory it occupies, killing them with drones near the front, and accumulating hundreds of crimes against them that European bodies have counted.

The strike landed on the editorial floor

My-Ukraina was broadcasting the national United News telethon, the joint wartime newscast that Ukrainian channels share, at the moment of the attack. Rescuers and medics worked at the site and treated the injured, the channel said. The strike came in daylight, hours after a mass overnight assault on the capital.

Fire and structural destruction hit the business center in the Solomianskyi district, and rescuers evacuated two people from its upper floors, the State Emergency Service said. It put the number injured at five and called that figure preliminary, with the count of victims still being clarified.

"A new page of Russian degradation"

Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that Russia had struck at media and at journalists with a Shahed, one of the Iranian-designed attack drones it launches at Ukrainian cities in mass waves.

"Right in the middle of the day. Exactly when the journalists were on air. The building is partly destroyed," he said. 

Emergency workers had already put out the fire, and the number of injured could still grow, he added.

"Shaheds against media is a new page of Russian degradation, and there must certainly be a reaction from Europe and the world," Zelenskyy said. 

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Russia had already damaged the channel's office overnight on 20 August during a mass attack on Kyiv. That blast blew out the windows, badly damaged the newsroom, and tore down part of the ceiling in the corridors.

Three killed in the capital over the day

Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said the number of people killed by Russian strikes in Kyiv since the start of 8 September had reached three. The city military administration put the number of injured across the capital at 19.

Explosions ran for almost five hours overnight and damaged more than 50 sites in Kyiv, the Interior Ministry reported. Russia fired ballistic, cruise, and anti-ship missiles along with jet-powered drones in that attack.

Kyiv is building reserves of food and drinking water to help residents during prolonged power outages and other emergencies, the Kyiv City Council said on 7 September.

The preparations come as Russia continues to target Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and food supply chains, while Ukrainian officials warn that water systems could also come under attack. Kyiv is therefore preparing for a broader range of disruptions this winter, not just power outages.

The city is preparing the reserves ahead of the 2026–2027 fall and winter season, with priority given to low-income residents and people facing difficult circumstances.

The supplies will also be available at Points of Invincibility, emergency support centers set up to provide basic services during prolonged blackouts, for people affected by emergencies, and for workers involved in emergency and other urgent response operations.

Kyiv prepares for attacks on food and water supplies as Russia makes air attacks harder to stop

Russia has increasingly targeted infrastructure connected to Ukraine’s food supply in recent months. Russian strikes have hit food warehouses and distribution facilities around Kyiv, contributing to shortages and periods of empty supermarket shelves in the capital and other parts of the country.

Ukrainian officials have also warned that Russia could target water infrastructure as part of its attacks on critical civilian systems, raising concerns about access to drinking water during prolonged disruptions.

This year, the threat is particularly acute as Russia has expanded its use of ballistic missiles and introduced faster, jet-powered Geran drones that are harder for Ukraine to intercept. Ballistic missiles can only be reliably intercepted by a limited number of air defense systems, while the faster drones reduce the time available to detect and engage them.

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Kyiv prepares for another difficult winter

Russia's strikes have repeatedly targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure during previous winters, causing extended blackouts and disruptions to heating and other essential services.

Kyiv is now preparing for the possibility that attacks could again leave residents without electricity or access to essential supplies for extended periods.

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Kyiv says food supply remains stable, for now

Oleh Kuіavskyi, deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration, said the city's preparations are focused not only on accumulating supplies but also on ensuring they can quickly reach people who need them.

“Food security in the capital is not only about having the necessary reserves, but also a clear system for their distribution and delivery to those who need help most,” Kuіavskyi said, according to the Kyiv City Council.

He said Kyiv's consumer market remains stable and predictable, while the city continues to hold agricultural food fairs across its districts to help maintain access to basic food products.

Reserves could feed 25,000 people

According to the city council, Kyiv has already formed and is maintaining reserves of key food products for use if the energy system comes under severe strain.

With support from charitable and civic organizations, the city can organize hot meals for up to 25,000 people, officials said.

The city's Department of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development also plans to purchase another 20,000 food packages for use during emergencies.

The reserves are being coordinated through Kyiv's Humanitarian Headquarters, established in February 2022. The body coordinates the city administration, district administrations, municipal companies, charities, and donors, including the accounting and distribution of emergency resources.

A Russian drone struck the central building of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) on Volodymyrska Street in central Kyiv on September 4, injuring 12 people, according to Ukrainian officials.

The strike hit the SBU’s central headquarters directly opposite St. Sophia’s Cathedral, one of Kyiv’s best-known historic landmarks.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said nine of the injured were hospitalized, with two in serious condition.

Drone targeted SBU chief’s office

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the drone was directed toward the office of SBU chief Oleksandr Poklad inside the building.

The SBU confirmed that the strike was deliberately aimed at Poklad’s office, but said he was not injured.

Zelenskyy said he had ordered Poklad to prepare a “meaningful” and, if possible, symmetrical response to the Russian attack, with Ukraine’s military supporting the operation.

Later, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had already determined the "geography" of its response and would choose the timing based on when it could achieve an effective result.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the strike on the SBU headquarters “major escalation that demands resolute responses,” saying it showed Moscow’s rejection of diplomacy during a renewed push for peace.

Kyiv faces near-daily Russian drone attacks

The strike occurred in the middle of the day in one of central Kyiv’s busiest areas, with large numbers of civilians and vehicles on nearby streets, according to Euromaidan Press sources on the ground.

The attack came amid a sustained Russian campaign of drone attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding oblast, with the capital repeatedly targeted by large waves of jet-powered Geran drones and other weapons.

The attacks have increasingly brought explosions, fires and falling debris to residential and civilian areas across the capital and its suburbs, forcing emergency crews to respond repeatedly as the city remains under a persistent aerial threat.

Russia’s new models of Geran drones, developed from Iranian-designed Shaheds, are harder for Ukrainian air defenses to intercept. Moscow is deploying them in growing numbers, increasing the chances that drones reach Ukrainian cities and intensifying the threat to civilians.

Building damaged and fire breaks out

The drone strike caused a fire in the building, which emergency crews later extinguished.

Klitschko said sections of the building’s ceiling and an exterior wall were destroyed. Emergency services remained at the scene after the fire was brought under control.

The SBU said the damaged headquarters would be restored.

The agency also vowed that Russia would face a response through further Ukrainian operations, including strikes against Russian assets and networks.

Historic Sofia Kyivska complex damaged

The Russian strike also damaged a building within the National Conservation Area “Sofia Kyivska,” located directly across Volodymyrska Street from the SBU headquarters, according to Suspilne.

According to the reserve’s director general Nelia Kukovalska, the blast shattered windows and destroyed the glass entrance structure of the complex’s Consistory building, whose exterior faces Volodymyrska Street.

No one at the reserve was injured, as staff and visitors took shelter. The historic St. Sophia Cathedral itself was not damaged, according to Kukovalska.

The nearby Zavertailo bakery was also damaged, though all staff and customers survived after taking shelter in the basement.

Russia has started launching its strike drones during the day, not only after dark. The reason is the new jet-powered Geran drones, which fire groups cannot take down, so for Russia there is no longer any difference between attacking by day or by night, Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, President Zelenskyy's adviser on defense technologies, told Glavcom.

The near-hourly daytime raids are the new face of a campaign that culminated on 1 September, Knowledge Day, when Russia hit Kyiv and its region with ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones and killed 12 people. That strike culminated a six-day assault on the capital that began on 27 August, two days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe arrived in Moscow. However, even after that, the attack continued. Sirens now sound across Kyiv and the surrounding oblast roughly once an hour, around the clock.

Why the shift to daylight

The daytime raids carry an added economic and psychological weight, he said. The threat of strikes forces shops and businesses to open and close unpredictably, snarls transport, and can halt rail service.

"They understand perfectly well that daytime attacks hurt the population and business," Beskrestnov said, adding that the state railway Ukrzaliznytsia is paralyzed.

Keeping the defenders on their feet

A further aim is to hold Ukraine's air defense in a permanent state of readiness, Beskrestnov said. Round-the-clock attacks mean radar stations and generators must run without pause.

"Radar stations and generators run constantly, and that also puts a strain on our troops," he added.

Kyiv remains a Russian prime target because it carries symbolic as well as military weight, as the capital houses the government, business, and warehouses, and a strike there would resonate far more than terrorizing a small town.

Russian forces first concentrated on districts nearer the drones' launch corridors — Kyiv's Left Bank, and the Brovary and Boryspil raions — before switching to the other bank to hunt for targets. As the cold season approaches, he expects Russia to intensify strikes on the energy infrastructure it has so far spared.

Estonia is automatically diverting emails using Russia’s .ru internet domain into quarantine for additional security checks before they reach state institutions connected to the country’s secure government network, Justice and Digital Affairs Minister Liisa Pakosta told Estonia's public broadcaster ERR.

The measure is intended to protect Estonian government computer systems amid a post-2022 surge in cyberattacks that officials link to Russia. It applies only to institutions operating inside the secure state network, leaving local governments and some state bodies outside.

Many Estonian residents, particularly Russian speakers, still use .ru email services, ERR noted. Because the filter is triggered solely by the address ending, legitimate messages will be screened alongside potentially malicious ones and may take longer to arrive.

Pakosta said the safeguard was necessary because cyberattacks against Estonia had increased “exponentially” since 2022 and that many were linked to Russia. She said such attacks had not succeeded against Estonia, while major public-sector cyberattacks had succeeded in both Latvia and Lithuania.

The rerouting is automatic and handled centrally, so agencies do not need to take any action, Pakosta said. A large proportion of state institutions have already moved behind the government’s unified cyber shield, while the transition continues.

Pakosta described the quarantine as one small measure within Estonia’s wider cybersecurity work. Estonia’s courts have gone further, saying they will ask parties in legal proceedings to stop using .ru addresses for official communication, according to ERR.

How the Baltic states are hardening against Russia

Estonia's email quarantine forms part of a broader Baltic effort to limit Russian influence and strengthen defenses against military, cyber, and covert threats.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are constructing a Baltic Defense Line, a planned network of bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and other barriers, along their borders with Russia and Belarus. Latvia has also banned imports of Russian and Belarusian books, clothing, toys, and other goods.

The threat extends beyond cyberattacks: an Estonian court found that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, ordered the 2024 firebombing of a Ukrainian restaurant in Tallinn, part of a wider Russian sabotage campaign targeting European supporters of Ukraine.

A fire at a Polish plant that makes drone parts for Ukraine's and Poland's militaries is being investigated as possible sabotage by a foreign intelligence service, Militarnyi reported. Poland's National Prosecutor's Office opened the case on two counts: foreign-intelligence activity against the country and a terrorist offense.

Fires and break-ins like this fit a widening pattern — the factories and supply lines that keep Ukraine armed are increasingly targets far from the front line. Across the continent, prosecutors keep opening the same kind of arson case against plants tied to Ukraine's defense.

A masked intruder and a two-hour fire

The fire started shortly after midnight on 31 August in the assembly hall of the WB Electronics plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna and spread to the storage rooms. Five crews put it out in under two hours. No one was hurt, but the storage rooms were destroyed, leaving at least 15 million zloty ($4 million) in damage. The plant had no permanent guards on site; a security company monitoring it remotely reported the fire.

Prosecutors say the blaze was set deliberately with a planted charge of flammable material, and no one has been charged. Security cameras recorded a masked person who climbed a fence and got onto the site.

Why Poland is looking at Moscow

Czesław Mroczek, deputy head of Poland's Interior Ministry, told RMF FM radio that many signs point to arson, and that a Russian trail is the obvious inference. An attack on the defense industry can suggest Russian involvement, he said, since European states have faced sabotage for years while backing Ukraine. Mroczek said protection plans for key defense plants must be richer than what this site had. No one has been detained, and investigators are still tracing how the intruder got in and who may have ordered it.

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What the plant actually makes

WB Electronics is the core of WB Group, Poland's biggest private arms holding, whose firms build reconnaissance and strike drones such as the FlyEye and the Warmate. The Skarżysko-Kamienna site itself makes drone components for unmanned systems, used by both Polish and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine received FlyEye drones back in 2022 under its Army of Drones program, and in 2025 WB Group launched drone production inside Ukraine.

Zaporizhzhia’s largest shopping and entertainment complex, City Mall, will remain closed throughout September following a Russian drone strike on a neighboring hypermarket last week.

Russia’s attacks are increasingly disrupting the basic civilian life of Ukrainian cities, as strikes on shops and other commercial facilities make it harder for businesses to operate and residents to go about their daily lives. The pattern is especially pronounced in cities close to the front, where Russia is unable to seize territory but can continue attacking from the air.

City Mall announced the closure on 1 September, apologizing to visitors and saying it would provide updates on when operations could resume. The complex did not give an official reason for the decision.

The announcement came four days after a Russian strike hit an Epicentr hypermarket located near the mall on 28 August. The attack sparked a fire covering about 2,000 square meters.

Russia targets Ukraine’s civilian economy

Shopping centers and other commercial facilities have increasingly been caught up in Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities.

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up attacks on commercial sites and retail storage facilities, particularly in and around Kyiv, as well as other major cities closer to Russia and the frontlines.

On 21 August, a Russian drone strike on a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih killed at least 15 people and injured 130, including 23 children, according to local authorities. A second strike hit emergency responders about 30 minutes later as they worked at the scene.

The attacks have also hit Ukraine’s retail sector financially. As of August, three shopping centers had been destroyed and nine more damaged by Russian attacks since the beginning of 2026, with direct losses to the sector reaching 3.226 billion hryvnias ($72.5 million), according to industry data cited by Censor.NET.

Fear of attacks is also keeping shoppers away. Air raid alerts accounted for 21.8% of shopping centers’ operating hours in August, up from 20.1% in July and 9.4% a year earlier.

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Zaporizhzhia under Russian attack

For Zaporizhzhia, the pressure is particularly severe. The major city lies close to the front line and has faced sustained Russian attacks throughout the full-scale war. 

Unable to seize the city through ground advances, Russia has repeatedly used missiles and drones to strike its infrastructure and civilian areas.

The result is a city where even businesses that survive direct strikes can be forced to close because of the continuing threat.