German services detained two Turkish citizens on 12 October over the 23 September arson attack on a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, near Warsaw, Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said. Both are suspected of arson, and Polish officials blame Russian intelligence. RMF24 later reported that German police also detained two more people who may be connected to the attack.

Poland is one of the main corridors for Western aid to Ukraine, and Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has said Poland spends about $50 million a year on Ukraine's Starlink service. That puts Polish infrastructure in the path of a Russian campaign that already hacks cameras to track arms heading east.

Fingerprints, DNA, and a route out

The men were held under European arrest warrants and now await transfer to Poland. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński wrote that the suspects would face charges of “subversion, sabotage on behalf of a foreign intelligence service” after their transfer to Poland. Polish authorities issued European arrest warrants for the suspects, who were subsequently detained in Germany.

Police chief Marek Boroń said investigators reconstructed how the suspects prepared the attack and fled. “We have secured recordings pointing to this specific action. We have fingerprints, the perpetrators’ DNA, how they moved, when they came to Poland, and when they were evacuated from our country,” he said. One suspect lives in Germany, and the other had been ordered to leave the country, he added.

Warsaw points at Moscow

Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the fire another act of Russia's hybrid war and promised the saboteurs will answer to Polish justice.

“We have no doubt that Russian intelligence services are behind this act of sabotage,” said Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating Poland’s special services.

Those services increasingly turn to people tied to the criminal world, he added.

Two more possible links

German counterterrorism officers detained a woman in Berlin, and a man is also in German custody, Polish radio RMF FM reported, citing its reporter. Both may be linked to the arson. The woman allegedly picked up the Turkish men near Łódź after they entered Poland from Germany, then drove them to Wola Krobowska. The man’s role is still being examined.

Ukraine’s amphibious ground robot UNEX UGV can tow artillery guns, its project lead said in a video interview, Militarnyi reported on 13 October. The electric platform from ABRIS Design Group (ABRIS DG) also swims, climbs, and hauls cargo on its own deck.

The Defense Ministry’s robot tally, kept in its DELTA system, counts supply and evacuation runs. It logged 25,143 of them in August, a monthly figure that has climbed all year. In April, then-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the goal was for robots to handle all frontline logistics. A robot that brings a gun and its shells to a position adds artillery moves to that workload.

A gun behind, shells aboard

The robot can pull a gun or another wheeled vehicle of up to 10 metric tons (about 22,000 lb), the project lead said. Ammunition can ride aboard, so the gun and its rounds reach the position together. No crew has to go with them, he said, and the team has already demonstrated the setup. On its own deck, ABRIS DG says, the robot carries up to 1.7 tons (3,750 lb) on land and 1.25 tons (2,760 lb) on water.

ABRIS DG said US Army testers ran UNEX through scenarios that included towing Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), which are armored US military trucks. The trials took place at the Army’s XTech competition in Vilseck, Germany, in March 2026. UNEX was picked as one of five winners, the company said.

Swims, climbs, backtracks

The robot can float for more than an hour. The team has already crossed the Desna River and narrow stretches of the Dnipro with it, the project lead said. Ultra-low-pressure tires spread its weight over soft ground and swamps. ABRIS DG says it climbs obstacles up to one meter (3.3 ft) high and drives out of water onto ice.

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Operators steer it via Starlink or radio. An escort drone can add an overhead view to the robot’s own cameras. If the link drops, the robot retraces its route to where the signal last held.

It runs on a Ukrainian-made 78 kWh battery. The project lead puts its work time at up to six hours and its range at up to 120 km (75 miles), with a top speed of 20 km/h (12 mph). Load and terrain cut into those figures, he added. With a generator now in development, a mission should stretch to about 12–14 hours, he said.

The robot is not built for the zero line, the project lead said. It works 20–30 km behind the front, at night, where armor would add little. Developers also plan demining and air defense versions. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry codified the robot and cleared it for use in its forces in April 2025.

Russia is building a satellite network that could soon put all of Europe within its reach. The “Rassvet” satellite system is an extraordinary threat, first to Ukraine and then to the rest of Europe, Oleksandr Danyliuk, the head of the private European aerospace and defense technology company Destinus, said at the Warsaw Security Forum, according to Ukrinform.

Rassvet is Russia’s answer to Starlink, a low-orbit satellite network built by Bureau 1440 to give Moscow’s forces communications that no one else can switch off. European states must invest more quickly in cheap, effective, mass-produced systems to counter it.

“They will be able to navigate to any point in Europe without problems. This needs to be stopped,” said Danyluik, a former Ukrainian finance minister, said.

Cheap systems, made at scale

Danyliuk’s prescription is already being used on Ukraine’s front. Europe should invest in inexpensive, effective systems that can be mass-produced, he argues, the same approach Ukraine uses, and that Russia also turns against it.

“This gap needs to be filled as quickly as possible,” he said.

He urged allies not to overlook threats that might look secondary today, pointing to Rassvet as exactly that kind of slow-building danger.

Appearing strong is not enough to deter Russia, Danyliuk argued, because Moscow can gauge how ready European states actually are.

Ukraine races to catch up

Both sides are now scrambling to own the satellite link rather than rent it. Ukraine is building a satellite system of its own, similar to Starlink but beyond any single company’s control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October.

He argued Kyiv should be free to turn Starlink on Russian military targets, warning that China and other states will share comparable satellite technology with Moscow within months.

By Ukrainian estimates, Russia still needs five to eight years to complete Rassvet, which so far reaches Ukraine only in brief passes. That window is the time Danyliuk says Europe must use.

SpaceX will not cut Ukraine off from Starlink satellite communications, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, presidential adviser on defense technology, says. The reason is that the company could lose a large share of its revenue.

Ukraine’s troops and drones lean heavily on Starlink, a network Kyiv neither owns nor controls, and Elon Musk has used that control against it before. The latest shutdown fears spread after Elon Musk supported US President Donald Trump's criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Not a year goes by without it coming up again: ‘They’ll cut off our Starlink.’ The enemy’s Telegram channels fuel these rumors. We have good and stable partner relations with SpaceX,” Flash writes.

Musk is first of all a businessman, and Ukraine brings SpaceX significant profit, so he is sure no one will switch Starlink off in Ukraine, Flash said. Unexpected moves are possible, he added, but of a different kind, such as turning Starlink on for Russia inside its own territory.

The rumors come amid real US pressure

The fears did not appear in a vacuum. After Trump allowed Russian diesel back to US markets, talk spread of "sanctions" on Ukraine if it keeps hitting the Russian refineries that fund Moscow, with the Financial Times reporting, citing European officials, that Trump’s administration has threatened to halt the mechanism for buying US weapons for Ukraine, known as PURL.

Axios has also reported, citing a Ukrainian and an American official, that Washington has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine if it continues striking Russian refineries.

Ukraine is building a backup

The scare feeds a longer effort to reduce dependence. Ukraine is working on a satellite system of its own, something similar to Starlink but beyond Musk’s control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October.

The timing is the reason, he said: some states will share the technology with Russia late this year or early next, and the Chinese are among them. Moscow is already fielding its own Starlink-style constellation, Rassvet, though for now it reaches Ukraine only in brief passes.

Ukraine is working on a satellite system of its own, something similar to SpaceX's Starlink, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October, Interfax-Ukraine reported. He argued Kyiv should be free to turn Starlink on Russian military targets, warning that China and other states will share comparable satellite technology with Moscow within months. Ukraine's battlefield communications still ride on a network owned by Elon Musk, who has clashed with Kyiv and once limited its wartime use.

Low-orbit satellite internet has turned into a frontline utility that a single company or government can switch on or off, and both armies are now racing to own that link instead of renting it. Control of the network decides whose drones can see the battlefield and fly through the jamming to strike it—leverage Kyiv has gone without while its connection rode on hardware it does not run.

Working on a Starlink of its own

Zelenskyy said there was groundwork in place and that Ukraine was working on a system similar to Starlink. He called it fair for Ukraine to aim Starlink at military sites inside Russia. The timing is the reason, he said: some states will share the technology with Russia late this year or early next, and the Chinese are among them. Moscow is already fielding its own Starlink-style constellation, Rassvet, though for now it reaches Ukraine only in brief passes.

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Ukraine's troops and drones lean heavily on Starlink, a network Kyiv neither owns nor controls. Musk has used that control against Kyiv before: in 2022 SpaceX refused a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink over occupied Crimea for a drone strike on Russia's warships, and it has since restricted the network's use for drone operations.

Sanctions, and satellites of its own

Zelenskyy has asked US President Donald Trump several times to sanction the Russian and Chinese companies building Russia's Rassvet network, most recently at the UN General Assembly in New York, he said in a recent Financial Times interview.

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Denys Shtilerman, co-founder and chief designer at Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, told the Financial Times in May that the firm had launched two satellites this year and planned dozens more in 2027, aiming to reduce reliance on the US government and Western tech companies. To strike deep inside Russia and gather intelligence, he has said, Ukraine needs its own constellation covering all of Russia.

Ukraine is about to tell Washington exactly which Russian targets it wants punished under America's new sanctions law, the Associated Press reported. A senior Ukrainian diplomat said Kyiv will hand the Trump administration and Congress a wish list of companies, ships, and people this week—and at the top are the firms supplying parts for Russia's answer to Starlink.

The law requires Washington to act but lets the president waive the sanctions if he certifies that doing so serves US national interests, and the first choice falls due in weeks. For Ukraine, a measure that names no targets changes nothing on the ground—which is why the fight now is over whose names make the list before the clock runs out.

A list topped by Russia's Starlink clone

Denys Sienik, chargé d'affaires at Ukraine's embassy in Washington, said the priority is a group of Russian firms making components for Rassvet, Moscow's homegrown satellite network, which Russia hopes to complete by the end of the year—though its own officials have put the start of service in 2027. Bureau 1440, the firm building Rassvet, is not itself on US sanctions lists, but its parent company, ICS Holding, is under US blocking sanctions, according to Militarnyi. The suppliers feeding the network parts are not sanctioned, and those are the ones Kyiv wants added to the list.

Russia sped up the project after Ukraine and SpaceX cut off the Starlink terminals its troops had used without authorization at the front. If Russia completes the constellation, Sienik said, it could strike Ukraine at will with real-time information—a danger he warned would bite hardest this winter. "If these entities are not sanctioned, it will actually make this program possible for Russia and that will be a game-changer," he told reporters, Reuters reported. Kyiv wants access to Starlink inside Russia, too, so it can strike targets there.

Euromaidan Press has reported how such a network would change the battlefield: the satellites transmit in high-frequency bands that are hard to jam, and a relay overhead would feed drones and missiles fresh coordinates mid-flight, letting them fly low under air defenses that struggle to see them.

Oil tankers and attacks on US firms

Ukraine is pushing for tougher action against Russia's shadow fleet, too—the aging tankers that sell its oil around Western restrictions—and is asking the administration and American industry to publicly condemn Russian attacks on US companies' operations inside Ukraine, Sienik said.

The deadline Washington is now facing

The requests arrive as the administration faces an 18 October deadline to decide which Russian entities, if any, to sanction under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which US President Donald Trump signed into law on 18 September. The law directs the White House to impose tariffs on Russia's biggest oil buyers and to block its banks, officials, and tankers—but lets the president waive those measures, which is why Kyiv is lobbying for the toughest list it can get.

The company that actually assembles Russia's homegrown answer to Starlink has been left off every Western sanctions list, a US research group and a Ukrainian anti-corruption watchdog separately told Euromaidan Press this month.

Both landed on the same gap—the manufacturer, Bureau 1440, and its leaders remain untouched by the West, even though Kyiv has already placed the firm on Ukraine's own sanctions list. They differ on how much a Western designation would achieve, not on where the opening is.

The company no Western government has sanctioned

Rassvet is Russia's low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation, built by the private firm Bureau 1440 to give Moscow's troops communications independent of SpaceX. Bureau 1440 launched its first 16 satellites in March 2026, building the network after SpaceX cut off the Russian units' unauthorized Starlink access. C4ADS, a US-based research organization, confirmed to Euromaidan Press that Bureau 1440 and its leadership sit outside every Western sanctions regime, and called designating the manufacturer the single most visible and effective step available.

Viktoriia Vyshnivska, a senior analyst at the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO), a Ukrainian watchdog, was more measured. "We shouldn't expect a magical effect," she said, but sanctions would make the Western boards and components Bureau 1440 depends on harder and costlier to source. Many of those goods are already banned under EU export controls, she noted—yet the manufacturer itself remains off the lists.

The EU named the network but not the firm

The EU has already moved once. Its 21st sanctions package, adopted on 23 July, targeted the Rassvet network but stopped short of the manufacturer, leaving Bureau 1440 and its chief executive off the lists. On 28 August, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv had sent a formal note to the UN's telecom agency requesting that Ukraine be excluded from Rassvet's coverage. Days later, he urged EU ministers to sanction the project. Ukraine gave partners a list of nine entities tied to it, Militarnyi reported, citing sources.

For years Ukraine could find, jam, or knock out the communication links Russian forces leaned on. Rassvet may be the first it cannot. Vyshnivska put the useful window to slow it at about a year. Russia, by Ukrainian calculations, needs five to eight years to see it through.

Euromaidan Press examined how Russia built Rassvet, and how far it still has to go.

Russia's low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation Rassvet went from a few minutes of connectivity over Ukraine to two stable windows lasting more than an hour each in just five months. The system was built by the Russian private company Bureau 1440 as Moscow's answer to Starlink.

As of now, it is nowhere near matching SpaceX's 10,000-satellite network—but the gap between what Russia has now and what it needs is closing, and the tools that could slow it down mostly sit unused. When Ukraine and SpaceX bricked Russian-obtained Starlink terminals earlier this year, Russian assaults froze across the front—proof that cutting satellite command-and-control links matters more than disrupting guidance. Russia is now building its own links. The most consequential tool that could slow that down is Western sanctions against Bureau 1440 itself.

Four years of Western sanctions have failed to cut Russia off from the foreign components its missile and drone factories rely on: parts manufactured after sanctions were imposed still reach Russian assembly lines within months. Rassvet is a new version of the same problem. The system is still being built and relies on imported components whose exact origin is disputed—some experts point to American and European parts reaching Russia through sanctions-evasion networks, others say the core hardware is built from off-the-shelf Chinese components. Its manufacturer remains unsanctioned by any Western government, while some of the infrastructure needed to expand production has already been struck by Ukraine.

Six minutes in March, two hours by August

In March 2026, Bureau 1440 launched its first operational batch of 16 Rassvet satellites from Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Each pass over Ukraine created a window of six to 10 minutes, Serhii Beskrestnov, callsign Flash, a Ukrainian presidential adviser on defense technology, estimated at the time.

By late August, the picture had changed. Tracking data from N2YO showed four passes a day and two stable communication windows lasting more than an hour each. Satellite communications expert Volodymyr Stepanets said that 12 of the 16 satellites from the first batch had reached their operational altitude of 550 km, three were still ascending, and one had burned up—likely due to a manufacturing defect. A second batch of 16 went into orbit in July, though those satellites struggled to reach their target altitude and some may reenter the atmosphere.

The second batch may be climbing faster than the first did at the same stage. Still, Russia is far from the 200–250 satellites Beskrestnov considers necessary for stable, round-the-clock coverage, and the altitude of roughly 550 km is still short of the roughly 800 km the constellation is designed to reach.

What Rassvet would change on the battlefield

Russia is unlikely to have any civilian use in mind for these communication windows. The satellites transmit in the Ka and Ku bands—high-frequency signals that are difficult to jam and difficult to detect.

Right now, Ukraine's electronic warfare can push Russian drones offline: a Shahed flying low through a jammed zone loses its link and drifts off course. A satellite relay overhead would change that. The drone holds its course, receives updated coordinates mid-flight, stays below radar, and strikes. The constellation could do this for long-range strike and naval drones alike—letting them operate through electronic warfare at very low altitudes, where Ukraine's air defenses struggle to see them.

Bureau 1440 has also developed user terminals small enough to fit on Geran-type attack drones and cruise missiles. Gerans have struck Ukrainian territory, including Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, almost continuously over the past month. A terminal on a Geran would turn a one-way munition into a weapon that can be redirected after launch. Unlike the Starlink terminals Ukraine relies on, which are geographically restricted, Russian terminals are expected to face no such limits—the same terminal that connects a Geran over Kyiv Oblast would work over Berlin or Paris.

The sanctions lever—and the gap in it

Rassvet's parent company, IKS Holding, is one of Russia's largest hardware and software developers. The US sanctioned the holding, its then-owner Anton Cherepennikov, and the subsidiaries Kryptonit and KNS Group on 24 February 2023. Cherepennikov died under unexplained circumstances, but the company keeps operating.

Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) says the holding serves as a personnel reserve for the Federal Security Service (FSB). The first deputy CEO of IKS Holding is Boris Korolyov, son of FSB First Deputy Director Sergei Korolyov, according to the SZRU. He took the post at 27 in 2023, after Cherepennikov's death.

More importantly, though, is the company that actually builds the satellites—Bureau 1440—and its leadership. Ukraine has placed the company on its own sanctions list, but Kyiv's unilateral designations carry limited trade enforcement power, because these people and this company are absent from Western lists. At Euromaidan Press's request, the US-based research organization C4ADS confirmed that Bureau 1440 and its leadership sit outside every Western sanctions regime, and called designating the manufacturer the single most visible and effective step available.

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From the Ukrainian side, Viktoriia Vyshnivska, a senior analyst at the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO), told Euromaidan Press that sanctions on Bureau 1440 are not a magic button—but they are not pointless, either. Because Bureau 1440 uses Western equipment, designating the company would directly affect trade in those boards and components, she said. Any Western manufacturer that kept doing business with the company would also risk investigation and legal consequences.

Given the reach of Russia's sanctions-evasion networks and its close ties with China in joint production and technology sharing.

"We shouldn't expect a magical effect," Vyshnivska said.

But sanctions would make direct trade impossible and raise the cost and difficulty of sourcing Western components.

Even if the useful window is short, making supplies more expensive and harder to find is the point.

Many of the goods Bureau 1440 uses are already banned from sale to Russia under EU export controls, Vyshnivska noted. Yet Bureau 1440 itself is still absent from the sanctions lists. Her recommendation: Bureau 1440, its current owners, its parent company, the key related entities and individuals, and its main suppliers should all be designated.

Diplomacy: Ukraine goes to the ITU

Beyond that, Ukraine is trying to act on its own on several fronts.

The first is diplomacy. On 28 August, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine had sent a formal note to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency that coordinates radio frequencies, demanding that Ukrainian territory be excluded from Rassvet's service areas across all frequency bands. The system's use over Ukraine "has nothing to do with civilian purposes," he wrote on X.

Days later, at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Ireland, Sybiha handed partners a list of nine legal entities linked to the project and urged them to impose sanctions.

The EU had already moved once: its 21st sanctions package, adopted on 23 July, targeted the Rassvet network. But the main gap is not closed, and that round stopped short of the manufacturer, leaving Bureau 1440 and its chief executive off the lists.

Hitting the supply chain with weapons

Another lever is direct strikes. In mid-August, Ukrainian-made Flamingo cruise missiles struck an industrial zone in Samara that houses the Progress Rocket Space Center—the only plant in Russia that serially assembles the Soyuz-2.1b rockets used to launch Rassvet into orbit. Satellite imagery published by the Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ showed a collapsed roof section 85 meters long and 35 meters wide over Building 106A, the hall where crews wire the rockets' control systems and cabling. The channel reported two missile hits on that hall.

If the hall was destroyed, production could stop entirely, and switching to other Russian launch vehicles would take significantly longer and add complexity. Drones also attempted to strike Plesetsk Cosmodrome, from which both 2026 batches were launched.

Both targets—the factory that builds the rockets and the site that launches them—are needed if Russia is to expand Rassvet production.

The timeline: 5.5 to eight years, if nothing changes

Russia plans to expand the constellation to 292 satellites by the end of 2027, Deputy Chief of Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) Vadym Skibitskyi said. Moscow's longer-term goal is 924 satellites by 2035.

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With 32 satellites already launched in two batches, 260 more are needed. At 16 satellites per launch, that requires roughly 17 launches. At a four-month interval between launches, deploying them would take roughly 5.5 years even if every launch succeeded and every satellite reached its target orbit. That most likely won't fully work out: one satellite from the first batch is already lost, two from the second batch may be lost as well, and none of them has yet reached the required altitude.

Russia also depends on the scarce Soyuz-2.1b rocket. The rocket has averaged only six to eight launches per year since 2022—most committed to GLONASS navigation satellites, ISS resupply, and military payloads—limiting Russia to a theoretical maximum of roughly two Rassvet-dedicated launches per year, or 128 Rassvet satellites over four years at that rate.

There is still time to shut this project down or slow it. Vyshnivska put the useful window to slow Rassvet at about a year. Russia, by Ukrainian calculations, needs five to eight years to see it through.

A Russian academic and an ultranationalist media owner have drawn up a menu of ways to knock out Starlink, the satellite network keeping Ukraine's drones and troops online, the Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi reported. The ideas run from jamming to a nuclear blast in space, and come as Poland investigates a suspicious fire at a Starlink ground station serving Ukraine.

Satellite internet is the nervous system of the drone war. Since a terminal cutoff early this year gutted Russian frontline coordination, Moscow's search for a workaround has widened from the spectrum to orbit—and from the battlefield toward the infrastructure that keeps the network alive.

The scenarios

Sergei Glazyev of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Konstantin Malofeyev, founder of the Russian outlet Tsargrad, laid out the proposals. Glazyev's list runs from cutting communication cables on land and undersea to crippling data centers and downing reconnaissance and command aircraft, whatever their nationality. Without American and British spotters, planners, and analysts, he claims, Ukraine's army would go blind. Glazyev's core argument is that Starlink satellites are not geostationary—nothing hangs over Ukraine, so the entire constellation must be struck at once.

For electronic warfare, they push wider use of the Volna Kupol Garant, a roughly $1.5 million system that beams a signal to briefly deafen a passing Starlink satellite over what its developers claim is up to 20 km². Kinetic options follow—the A-235 Nudol and S-500 Prometheus interceptors—though they call spending one costly missile on one cheap satellite "insane extravagance." A third idea scatters metal pellets to spark what the authors call the Kessler effect—a debris cascade that would destroy everything at that altitude.

The bluntest proposal detonates a nuclear device in space, its pulse frying electronics on low-orbit satellites. The authors admit this would also wreck Russia's own Rassvet network, which orbits at a similar altitude. "We can no longer hit Musk's creation for free," they write, "but it's still the optimal option. The legal consequences are unimportant."

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A station burns in Poland

On 23 September, fire destroyed the distribution panel of a ground Starlink station in Wola Krobowska that feeds Poland and Ukraine. Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said sabotage could not be ruled out and that the pattern matched Russian services' modus operandi. A bottle of flammable liquid was found beside the burned distribution panel, according to sources cited by RMF24. Exatel, which the minister named as the station's operator, said it only subleases the land and transmits data there, and neither operates nor owns the infrastructure.

Several recent incidents across Europe were conducted by Russia or are likely attributable to Russia, ISW assessed in its 24 September report, though authorities have not officially linked the Polish and German incidents to Moscow.

Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine has expanded into a parallel campaign of provocations against European defense and logistical infrastructure. The Kremlin is using drones, arson, and undersea cable sabotage to degrade Europe's will and ability to support Ukraine, while deliberately intensifying the frequency of airspace violations to erode the boundary between hybrid and kinetic war.

Drones over Moldova and Romania

Four Russian drones flew over Bukovyna and targeted an energy facility and border crossings with Moldova and Romania, Chernivtsi Oblast Military Administration head Ruslan Osypenko reported. Ukrainian forces shot down three. The fourth flew toward Suceava County in northeastern Romania.

A drone crashed in Cernița, Florești district, Moldova—preliminarily identified as a Russian Gerbera type, the first such device found in the country. It carried an onboard camera, hit a tree, and exploded, Moldovan police said. Romania's Defense Ministry reported a second aerial vehicle entered Romanian airspace for four minutes and crashed near Solca in the same border region; geolocated footage confirmed it was also a Gerbera, ISW noted. Poland evacuated the Hrubieszów and Dorohusk border crossings for 30 minutes, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. Three countries were put on alert by a single night of Russian strikes.

"Intentional and accidental Russian drone incursions into NATO and Moldovan airspaces are likely part of the Kremlin's efforts to normalize airspace violations by intensifying their frequency," ISW assessed.

Sabotage in Poland and Germany

A fire engulfed the power system and backup generator at a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, central Poland, on the evening of 23 September. Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski confirmed it was sabotage aimed at cutting internet access, including for Ukraine's military. Authorities have not identified who was responsible, but the act aligns with Russia's "new" doctrine of attacks, Gawkowski said. The station is now operating normally.

German authorities suspended operations at Berlin-Brandenburg airport for 45 minutes the same evening after staff reported a drone sighting, Die Zeit reported. Federal police could not confirm it. ISW assessed both incidents fit Russia's wider pattern of sabotage against European defense assets, though neither has been officially attributed to Russia.

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Western intelligence warnings

A Lithuanian Defense Ministry source reported on 23 September that Russia could launch Gerbera drones from a shipping container in the Mediterranean against Spain, France, and Italy. Danish Defense Intelligence assessed on 24 September that Russia will intensify its hybrid war in coming months, including destructive cyber attacks and sabotage carrying a high risk of casualties, and that there is a low but growing risk of a limited Russian military attack on a NATO border state. It sees no indications of an outright invasion. The CIA reportedly warned Poland that Russia may sabotage underwater cables to disrupt its banking system, according to Newsweek Polska journalists.

NATO tracked and confronted Russian submersibles rehearsing deployment of a new cable-disabling weapon near Svalbard in spring 2026—no cables were damaged, but the operation demonstrated Moscow's intent, Reuters reported. Shadow fleet vessels likely served as drone-launch platforms for incursions into NATO airspace, ISW noted.

"The increasing frequency of such warnings suggests that Western intelligence agencies are picking up indicators that the Kremlin is looking to diversify its platforms and means for conducting attacks against NATO and European states and is considering conducting such attacks," ISW assessed.

ISW said it has not yet seen evidence that Russia has conducted the attacks the warnings describe.

Denmark's assessment—that a limited Russian military strike on a NATO border state could come in the coming months—suggests the boundary between hybrid provocations and military action is narrower than European policy has assumed. ISW's synthesis reframes what governments have treated as separate incidents into one campaign.

"Intentional and accidental Russian drone incursions into NATO and Moldovan airspaces are likely part of the Kremlin's efforts to normalize airspace violations by intensifying their frequency," ISW assessed.

"The increasing frequency of such warnings suggests that Western intelligence agencies are picking up indicators that the Kremlin is looking to diversify its platforms and means for conducting attacks against NATO and European states and is considering conducting such attacks," ISW assessed.

Ukraine's 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelya is converting American-made armored vehicles into remotely operated platforms as part of its "remote infantry" concept, head of the regiment's innovation support group Edhar Vinnik wrote in an exclusive column for 24 Kanal. The approach rests on a simple principle: if a machine can do the job, no soldier should risk their life doing it, Vinnik argued. The regiment established an Innovation Center to develop unmanned systems and robotic platforms, Militarnyi reported.

The M1117 is the second vehicle Skelya has converted to unmanned control—after completing the Novator armored car in June—and the regiment's approach won a Defense Ministry DELTA innovation competition on 31 August 2026, earning approximately $33,700. The pattern suggests Ukraine's cheapest path to unmanned ground capability may not run through purpose-built robots but through vehicles already in service, upgraded with off-the-shelf hardware.

M1117 conversion nears completion

The regiment is in the final stages of converting the American M1117 Guardian into a remotely controlled platform. The 4x4 vehicle has been in Ukrainian service since 2023.

"The project of remote control of the American armored wheeled vehicle M1117 is in the final stage," Vinnik said.

This is Skelya's second such conversion. In June, the regiment completed a similar project with the Novator armored car. The Novator received multiple communication channels: Starlink, LTE, and Silvus radio systems. Vinnik argued the conversions prove that remote control can scale to any vehicle in service, if the hardware supports it.

Software ties the system together

Without adequate software, all unmanned platforms would remain isolated machines, Vinnik noted. The regiment's IT Innovation Department develops proprietary software for coordinating unmanned systems. One solution replicates functionality similar to R2D2—a network data-relay infrastructure that enables remote equipment operation. Using off-the-shelf routers cut the cost roughly fourfold.

"Without adequate software, all these drones and ground systems would remain just separate machines," Vinnik said.

The cost reduction matters for scalability, Vinnik argued. A technology that exists in one copy is a demo—one cheap and reliable enough for hundreds of crews is a capability. The regiment measures its progress by one number, he wrote: how many soldiers were not sent where they could be killed or wounded.

Why old armor gets a second life

The M1117 Guardian—built on the Cadillac Gage Commando chassis from the Vietnam War era—exemplifies the trend. The regiment's Innovation Center, established in autumn 2025, won a Defense Ministry DELTA innovation competition on 31 August 2026. Skelya's approach reflects a broader Ukrainian trend of converting existing vehicles into unmanned platforms rather than building robots from scratch. The National Guard's Khartiia Corps earlier converted a 12-ton US-made M113 armored personnel carrier into an unmanned platform for remote demining and logistics, fitting it with anti-drone armor and a mine flail. Ukraine is also rebuilding Soviet BRDM-2 armored scouts into remotely operated robotic platforms, and three units recently received Kaban—a bolt-on kit that turns ordinary vehicles into uncrewed ones.