Russian propagandists used the Matryoshka disinformation network to circulate a digitally altered front page of the Polish regional weekly Przegląd Regionalny warning of a “hungry fall and winter” in Ukraine, the country’s Center for Countering Disinformation reported.

The fake turns genuine anxiety over Russian attacks on warehouses and food logistics into an unsupported prediction of mass starvation. The Center said Matryoshka routinely disguises fabricated material as reporting by established Western outlets, lending Russian narratives borrowed credibility while creating the impression that foreign media consider Ukraine’s situation hopeless.

The fabricated Przegląd Regionalny front page claimed Russian strikes would push 63% of Ukrainians to the brink of famine over a “hungry autumn and winter.” No such article ran—the real front page of that issue looked entirely different, and the circulated image was built using graphics-editing software, the Center said.

The image spread through Matryoshka, a network that dresses invented content in the mastheads of recognized Western outlets. In this case, the campaign was meant to frighten Ukrainians and weaken public confidence, according to the Center.

Although it impersonated a Polish outlet, the Center described Ukrainians—not Polish readers—as the campaign’s target: the Polish masthead supplied an apparently independent foreign voice for a Russian narrative.

The fake works because the disruption it points to is real. Russian attacks on warehouses and food logistics had destroyed up to 90% of Ukraine’s modern food storage capacity, and suppliers were moving stocks and changing delivery routes and storage methods in response, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on 28 August 2026, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

Supermarket chain ATB has temporarily capped purchases of certain essential goods at 6 units of any single product per customer, citing both Russian strikes and resellers buying in bulk.

What the fake predicts, though, is not what officials expect. Presidential defense-technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov urged Ukrainians not to panic and said a systemic food shortage was not expected, ZN.UA reported.

How Russia spreads disinformation in Poland

Russia has repeatedly exploited Poland’s information space to turn political, economic, and security anxieties against Ukraine. Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Russian intelligence had offered Poles €3,000–€4,000 ($3,500–$4,600) to spread disinformation before the 2025 presidential election.

After Russian drones entered Poland that September, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the Kremlin was using real fears and emotions to fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment. False claims about Ukrainians living off Polish taxpayers have also fed hostility as bilateral relations frayed.

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.

US Army Green Berets have begun training Poland's special forces to move and strike on the kind of drone-saturated ground Ukraine fights on, the Associated Press reported. No ally besides the US had taken on the drone-heavy drill until now, and US instructors built it only months ago from Ukraine's battlefield lessons.

Ukraine has turned from an aid recipient into a source of tactics, feeding allies the counter-drone methods and strike tactics it forged against Russia's invasion. NATO is still behind: an alliance war game in February exposed how badly its own forces fare against drone warfare of that kind.

Bavaria plays the part of Russia

The drill spans a 1,100-square-mile (3,000 km²) stretch of Bavarian countryside around the US Army's Hohenfels training center, an hour southeast of Nuremberg. Polish commandos must slip past a US airborne unit playing the enemy, then move about 60 miles (100 km) north to Grafenwoehr and blow up a mock target.

In earlier runs, Green Berets removed their uniforms to blend in, a senior enlisted soldier familiar with the scenario said. He and a Green Beret officer at the training complex spoke anonymously, under a US policy against naming special forces personnel.

"This is supposed to be Russia and you're going to stand out in Russia," he said.

Farms, villages, cameras, and a populous city line the route. German civilians, largely unaware of the exercise, become the test: any tip they phone to police can help the military pinpoint the team. Once a team is spotted, "now you have the entire Russian arsenal coming at you," the soldier said. The US side can send military police with dogs or direct more drones to the area, and had more than 100 available in earlier runs.

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A Green Beret officer said the drill tries to replicate "all of those effects that we're seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome." Ukraine pioneered this kind of drone warfare across four and a half years of fighting Russia. Its combat experience has been entering NATO training elsewhere in Poland, and its drone crews recently outmatched a US brigade in another German drill. The exercise has run just twice before, both this year with US teams, and the officer said he expects most, if not all, of NATO's 32 members to show interest in trying it.

The wider US message on drones has been mixed, AP said. On 20 August, the Army's acting chief of staff ordered a Europe-based drone unit back to infantry duty. US President Donald Trump has also wavered on cutting troop levels in Europe, and his administration launched a force review.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in March that Ukraine was already helping five Middle East and Gulf states counter Iranian drones fired during the US-Israeli war on Iran, and that US and European governments had asked for help too, AP reported.

NATO said on 30 August 2026 it sees no imminent threat of attack from Russia, Reuters reported. Russia is stepping up covert operations across Europe alongside its war on Ukraine, a NATO official said. The statement followed a week of warnings from Western capitals.

Russia's sabotage campaign in Europe has grown steeply since the full-scale invasion, reaching from Molotov cocktails thrown at a French drone plant to severed undersea cables and attacks on railways. Recorded attacks in Europe hit 34 in 2024, nearly triple the 12 counted a year earlier by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which says Western states have yet to build an effective answer to a campaign pitched below the threshold that would trigger a military response.

Attacks on Ukraine and covert acts in Europe are both rising

Russia is attacking Ukraine harder and running more covert operations in Europe at the same time, the official said.

"Even as the Russians are facing very substantial resistance from Ukraine, they are stepping up attacks on Ukraine as well as hybrid acts in Europe," the official said, adding: "As always, NATO remains vigilant and alert to the variety of threats we face. At this time, we see no imminent threat of attack."

Hybrid acts mean covert moves—sabotage, arson, drone flights—that stop short of open war.

A week of alarms

Three developments that week bore on the same question—whether Russia would strike a NATO country, not only Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on 28 August that Russia is preparing to escalate both in Ukraine and across the region, putting the critical window at seven or eight months.

Days earlier, CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow to meet intelligence counterparts. Two people familiar with the meeting told Reuters that Ratcliffe did raise the prospect of Russia acting against a NATO state, though whether the trip had any other aim stayed unclear. One source said several topics came up, including Russia's support for Iran. US President Donald Trump dismissed that reading two days later, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attack NATO territory and that Ratcliffe carried no message.

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On 25 August, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at a coalition summit that his government will soon name who was behind the 4 August drone attack attempt at Leipzig/Halle airport. Russia denies any role in sabotage on European soil and dismisses such accusations as Western scaremongering.

Poland's prime minister says the next seven or eight months could decide the region's security. Donald Tusk said there are signs of serious Russian preparations to escalate tensions, both in the war against Ukraine and across the region, according to Ukrinform.

Tusk's warning follows weeks of similar alarms from the countries on NATO's eastern edge. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said on 15 July that intelligence pointed to possible Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in the Baltic states or Poland, according to Defense News.

Poland is the main transit route for Western military aid to Ukraine, which makes its security inseparable from Ukraine's. Tusk himself said in July that Russia could be ready for a confrontation with Europe as early as 2027.

The CIA visit was not the whole of it

At the meeting, reporters asked Tusk about the recent visit of CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow. Poland is in constant contact with the agency's leadership and was not caught off guard by news of Ratcliffe's activity, he said.

Some security information must stay confidential, Tusk added, but that does not mean the public should be deprived of information about the most important threats.

The signals go beyond one trip

The matter is no longer only the CIA director's visit to Moscow, Tusk said. Over recent weeks, numerous public signals have pointed to Russian preparation for escalation.

Russia is very seriously preparing to escalate tensions, both in the war with Ukraine and across the whole region, and that for Russia this fall and winter are meant to be key, he claimed.

Moscow states its aims openly

Some Russian figures have described the war's purpose in plain terms. This week, State Duma vice-speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said Russia views Ukraine as a "territory" that would allow Moscow to export its energy to Europe via a short route, not as a sovereign country.

Tolstoy, whom the EU sanctioned in 2022 as a central figure in Russian state propaganda, also called for massed bombing of Ukrainian cities to break the population into surrender. His remarks are one more public signal of the kind Tusk pointed to.

Poland's governing coalition under Prime Minister Donald Tusk misread how far Kyiv's ambitions had grown and kept presenting Warsaw as Kyiv's indispensable guide to Europe, Polish journalist Mateusz Mazzini argued in The Guardian on 26 August 2026. It also never readied Polish society to treat refugees as its equals, and it encouraged the belief that Warsaw could decide whether Ukraine gets into the EU, he wrote.

The two countries built their partnership during Russia's full-scale invasion, with Poland becoming Ukraine's main supply route for Western weapons, a leading provider of military and humanitarian aid, and a leading advocate for Kyiv's bid to join the European Union. That relationship has since frayed over refugee policy, historical disputes, and attitudes toward Ukrainians. A July poll by CBOS, Poland's biggest pollster, found that 52% of Poles opposed accepting Ukrainian refugees, compared with 42% who supported it, the first such reversal since the survey began in 2015.

He also points to Russian propaganda on Polish social media, where false stories about Ukrainian "welfare queens" living off Polish taxpayers feed hostility that keeps turning violent. Neither government prepared for the goodwill running out, he says, and Russian disinformation worked the gap they left to drive the two apart and thin Europe's backing for Kyiv.

Historical disputes have added to the tension

On 19 June 2026, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest state decoration, previously awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The move followed a decree Zelenskyy signed on 26 May giving an existing Ukrainian special operations unit the honorary name Heroes of the UPA, after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Nawrocki cited Poland's dispute with Ukraine over the UPA's role in the World War II-era massacres of Poles in Volhynia. He said the decision did not change Poland's strategic security policy and that Poland continues to support Ukraine because Russia's aggression threatens Poland and Europe.

The journalist also faults Poland for missing how Ukrainians in the country have become more economically independent. They established more than 33,000 sole proprietorships in Poland in 2024, according to the Polish Economic Institute.

Ukraine has changed internationally as well, in his account, going from taking Western aid after the 2022 invasion to selling military technology and know-how around the world. Kyiv's leaders now approach Washington and Western European capitals on their own, he argues, and no longer need an "advocate," least of all in Warsaw.

Looking ahead, he expects Ukraine to integrate further into the European economy, competing more directly with French and German businesses as it already does with Polish ones. Kyiv, in his forecast, will approach Brussels, Paris, and Berlin as an equal rather than a supplicant, on the argument that the cost it has borne holding Russia off Europe entitles it to that place. His warning is aimed past Warsaw. Poland has already paid for misreading Ukraine, he writes, and other European capitals can still avoid repeating the error.

A wave of anti-Ukrainian attacks

The strain has also turned violent. Ukrainian citizens filed 180 hate-crime reports with Polish police in the first half of 2026, roughly one a day and more than 30% above a year earlier, national police figures showed, Rzeczpospolita reported. The figures count reports filed, not confirmed offenses.

In late July, three men allegedly beat a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after asking whether they were Ukrainian. Police detained two suspects and treated the assault as a nationality-motivated hate crime. Earlier that month, a man in Łódź attacked a passerby he mistook for Ukrainian, breaking his nose and jaw and telling him his place was not in Poland.

Ukrainian troops have been shooting down Russian aircraft with Polish Pioruns since 2022. Poland's Defense Ministry has signed a framework agreement worth more than $2 billion for several thousand shoulder-fired systems in the largest order ever placed for these launchers and missiles.

The money comes from SAFE, the European Union's 150-billion-euro defense loan facility created in response to Russia's war. Poland holds the largest national envelope at 43.7 billion euros, ahead of 18 other participants, TVP World reports.

Four countries split the order

The systems will go to the armed forces of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway, the last of which is not an EU member. More than 80% of the missiles and launchers are earmarked for the Polish army, with the implementation agreement for Poland financed from SAFE funds, according to the ministry's release.

The contract also covers simulators, training, and logistics packages. Mesko, part of the state-owned PGZ defense group, manufactures the system.

"Piorun is our export hit," said Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, state secretary at Poland's Defense Ministry, adding that other EU countries showed interest in them during talks on the SAFE mechanism.

The seeker head does the work

The Piorun is a modernized Grom that remains in Polish service. The upgrade brought a modified launch mechanism, a new and more sensitive homing head, and an electro-optical sight mounted on a rail.

Those changes improved target acquisition, resistance to countermeasures, and effective range against low-flying aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, and drones.

Ukraine's record set the reference

Poland approved its first Piorun transfer to Ukraine on 1 February 2022, three weeks before the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian crews have since used the system against cruise missiles, aircraft, and helicopters, and Western analysts list it among the short-range systems European industry can supply without American approval.

The ministry's announcement names no allocation for Ukraine.

Polish officers have detained a Ukrainian accused of trying to murder a figure from Ukraine's weapons sector on Moscow's orders, Reuters reported. Investigators say his homemade explosive failed to detonate, and he fled to Poland, where officers detained him. The case is the latest in a run of Russian-directed plots targeting people tied to Ukraine across Europe.

A car bomb that failed

The suspect, named only as Serhii P. under Polish privacy rules, allegedly went after a figure in Ukraine's weapons sector in Irpin, a town in Kyiv Oblast just northwest of the capital. The ABW, Poland's Internal Security Agency, said he planted an improvised explosive device under a car used by the potential victim. The device was meant to be set off remotely with a cellphone, but it "did not detonate due to a malfunction," the agency said.

The suspect, a 63-year-old Ukrainian, fled to Poland after the attempt collapsed and was arrested in Warsaw on 5 August 2026, the Ukrainian outlet NV says. Polish authorities announced the arrest on 20 August and said it kept him from using Poland as a hideout while he dodged investigators. Prosecutors charged him with trying to kill with a bomb and with holding explosives without a permit. The charges carry a floor of 15 years behind bars and a ceiling of life, they said.

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The ABW framed the case as proof that Russian intelligence runs operations far beyond its own borders, using people who move between countries to do the work. For years, Kyiv and Western capitals have said Moscow enlists people — Ukrainians among them — to run sabotage and spying missions, a charge Russia keeps rejecting.

A pattern across Europe

The plot fits a wider Russian campaign. Weeks earlier, Warsaw detained a Russian man whom Moscow had allegedly recruited to murder a Ukrainian-American in the same city. 

Earlier this year, Ukrainian investigators recently exposed a coordinated scheme to kill a Russian dissident and Ukraine supporter in Lithuania, German prosecutors filed sabotage charges against a Ukrainian and a Latvian, and an earlier plot targeted the chief of German arms-maker Rheinmetall.

Poland and the Baltic States have been named prime targets for Russian sabotage over their backing for Kyiv.

Poland has held up a Ukrainian search at Łasków for months, Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar told Polish broadcaster RMF24, NV reported on 19 August. He says the eastern Polish village may contain the remains of civilians killed there by Polish underground forces in 1944.

The permit dispute is part of a much larger argument over how Ukraine and Poland remember the wartime killings of Poles and Ukrainians. Reciprocal searches resumed only recently after years of deadlock, giving both countries a way to recover and identify victims even as they disagree over historical responsibility. The latest delay tests that fragile progress while Poland remains Ukraine’s main route for Western arms and aid.

Bodnar says Ukrainian civilians were killed at Łasków in 1944 by the Home Army—Poland’s principal underground resistance force during the Nazi occupation—and the Peasant Battalions, an agrarian underground movement.

Bodnar appealed to Poland to issue "at least one permit" for searches on its territory. He said Ukraine systematically approves Polish requests in return. The ambassador blamed the holdup on unspecified “bureaucratic restrictions” and urged Warsaw not to leave the impression that Kyiv was obstructing the work.

In July, Bodnar said Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance had supported the Łasków application procedurally and that only approval from the regional monuments conservator remained. He expected work to start in August.

The institute said it had assisted with Łasków but was awaiting more documents for Ukraine’s separate applications concerning Sahryń and Przemyśl.

Past Polish-Ukrainian exhumations

Reciprocal work between Ukraine and Poland resumed only after Kyiv lifted a moratorium imposed in 2017. Ukraine had halted Polish exhumations in response to the destruction of Ukrainian memorial sites on Polish soil.

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A joint team exhumed the remains of 42 Polish victims of massacres by Ukrainian nationalists at Puzhnyky in western Ukraine in May 2025. Ukrainian researchers later searched for a suspected grave of up to 18 Ukrainian Insurgent Army fighters at Jureczkowa, Poland, but found none.

Ukraine granted further permits for Polish searches in 2026. Joint work at Uhly in Rivne Oblast found no mass grave, while exhumations began at Ostrivky and Volia Ostrovetska in July.

Historical grievances strain wartime alliance

The searches are the practical core of a broader dispute over wartime killings of Poles and Ukrainians. Competing interpretations of the Volyn tragedy and battles over Ukrainian Insurgent Army symbols have increasingly spilled into Polish politics and the streets.

Kyiv says it continues approving Polish grave searches while its own researchers wait to begin work in Poland.

Romania destroyed an explosives-laden maritime drone near its critical Neptun Deep gas platform and recovered debris from a separate aerial drone that crashed on its soil, the Romanian Defense Ministry reported. The incidents came during a major Russian attack on Ukraine on 20 August that killed 14 people in Kyiv city and oblast, caused incidents in Moldova, and triggered air defense activation in Poland.

F-16 fires cannon at sea drone near gas platform

A commercial vessel spotted a drifting maritime drone near the Neptun Alpha production platform, approximately 80 nautical miles east of Constanța, at around 06:28, the Defense Ministry said. Two Romanian F-16s scrambled with orders to fire. One engaged the target with its onboard cannon—the first time Romania used a cannon against a drone and the first engagement against a maritime drone. All previous shootdowns used air-to-air missiles against aerial drones.

The country's Defense Minister Radu Miruță said the drone was carrying explosives and was spotted just hundreds of meters from the platform where several hundred people work. Through a recently established direct communication channel, Ukraine confirmed the drone was not of Ukrainian origin. President Nicușor Dan directly blamed Russia, condemning "the intensification of these types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation."

The engagement came nine days after Romanian navy divers destroyed two Gerbera-type drones drifting near the same platform by controlled detonation.

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Aerial drone crashes in Romania's Tulcea County

Earlier overnight, Romanian radar detected aerial targets near the Ukrainian border at 02:23, the Defense Ministry said. Two Spanish F-18s from NATO's air policing mission and a Romanian IAR-330 SOCAT helicopter scrambled. At 03:21, a drone crossed into Romanian airspace 13 km east of Galați and crashed three minutes later near the village of Grindu in Tulcea County. No casualties or damage were reported. The fragments posed no explosive hazard.

The crash came four days after a Spanish F-18 shot down another drone over Romanian airspace, Euronews reported. Romanian F-16s intercepted three Russian drones in July.

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Poland activates defenses, Moldova hit by drone spillover

Poland's Operational Command activated military aircraft and ground-based air defense systems during the Russian attack as a preventive measure. The Netherlands provided air defense support. No breach of Polish airspace was recorded.

Moldova faced multiple incidents. At 03:16, the country's National Army detected what was preliminarily identified as a Shahed-136/Geran-2 drone crossing from Ukraine near Kotlovyna in Odesa Oblast into Moldova's Gagauzia region. It returned to Ukrainian airspace six minutes later, public broadcaster Moldova1 said.

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Separately, an explosion at a truck parking lot on Ukrainian territory about 150 meters from the Giurgiulești-Reni border crossing at around 03:45 sparked a fire that spread onto Moldovan soil, Newsmaker reported. Border police found drone fragments in a crater approximately 1 km inside Moldovan territory. 

Russian strikes in southern Odesa Oblast overnight into 20 August left 13,000 utility customers without power, Odesa Oblast head Oleh Kiper reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said drones attacked a checkpoint on Ukraine’s border with Moldova.

Russia has intensified attacks on southern Ukraine’s Danube region, where ports and transport routes lie close to Moldova and Romania. The spillover from the attacks has forced these neighboring countries to close airspace, scramble aircraft, and shoot drones down.

The Odesa Oblast Military Administration said Russian strikes disrupted power in several communities, and repair crews began restoration work. It did not identify damaged electrical equipment or say whether the grid had been shut down as a precaution. Two truck trailers carrying food caught fire at another location, but firefighters extinguished both blazes, the State Emergency Service said. No casualties were reported.

Zelenskyy did not identify which crossing was attacked or describe the damage. The Izmail District State Administration later reported that Russia attacked the Reni community with Shahed-136 drones. It recorded a hit on an unspecified site near the Reni–Giurgiulești international checkpoint.

People and freight cross between Ukraine and Moldova through checkpoints such as Reni–Giurgiulești. The district administration did not describe the damage or say whether the checkpoint remained open.

Russian attacks keep reaching Moldova

At 03:16 on 20 August, surveillance systems operated by Moldova’s National Army detected an unauthorized flight, public broadcaster Moldova1 reported.

The object was preliminarily identified as a Shahed-136/Geran-2, a long-range explosive drone used by Russia. It crossed from Ukraine near Kotlovyna in southwestern Odesa Oblast and flew toward Etulia in Moldova’s autonomous Gagauzia region. It returned to Ukrainian airspace at 03:22.

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Similar incidents occurred earlier in August. An unidentified aerial object exploded in a Moldovan field 12 kilometers from Ukraine on 9 August. On 17 August, Moldova closed part of its airspace for 15 minutes after Ukraine’s Air Force warned that a Russian Banderol, a jet-powered missile-drone, had crossed from Odesa Oblast. The object later exploded near Talmaza.

Romania activates defenses

On 20 August, Romania’s Defense Ministry said its radars detected targets near Ukraine at 02:23 and scrambled two Spanish F-18s and a Romanian helicopter. A drone entered Romanian airspace east of Galați at 03:21 and crashed near Grindu at 03:24. Its impact started a fire that went out on its own. Romania reported no casualties or material damage.

Four days earlier, a Spanish F-18 shot down a drone that entered Romania from Moldova. NATO said it appeared to be Russian.

Russia has recently intensified attacks on Ukraine’s Danube ports and struck the Mayaky bridge connecting southern Ukraine with Moldova and Romania. Such attacks can disrupt Ukraine’s transport links and force neighboring militaries to react within minutes.

Polish prosecutors have charged a 46-year-old woman over a nationality-based attack on two Ukrainian siblings in Bydgoszcz, days after police detained her and a 34-year-old man, whom they questioned as a witness, Polish Radio's Ukrainian Service reported the detentions on 18 August 2026, with the charges filed the same evening.

The detentions came four days after the alleged attack in a park near Bydgoszcz’s main railway station. The Bydgoszcz-North district prosecutor charged the woman with insulting the siblings and violating a minor's bodily integrity on nationality grounds. She denied intentionally insulting or assaulting the children and gave police a different account of the encounter.

The case comes amid rising reports of suspected hate crimes against Ukrainians and worsening relations between Warsaw and Kyiv. Police received 180 such reports in the first half of 2026—about one a day. At that pace, 2026 would end more than 30% above 2025 and nearly 35% above 2024.

Prosecutors charged only the woman; the 34-year-old man detained with her was questioned as a witness, even though the mother and the consulate described both adults as aggressors. The prosecutor placed her under police supervision, imposed a no-contact order, and set bail at 5,000 zł ($1,340). The destruction of the boy's toy drone was treated as a misdemeanor because the toy was worth just over 100 zł ($27).

The siblings—a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother—were playing with a toy drone in the park when the adults confronted them about using it, their mother told police. The Ukrainian consulate said the adults also insulted and threatened the children after hearing them speak Ukrainian.

“They twisted a child’s arm, broke a toy drone, and threw fragments at the boy,” Ukraine’s Consulate General in Gdańsk said.

The consulate said the fragments scratched the boy but caused no serious injury.

Other attacks on Ukrainians in Poland

The Bydgoszcz case is one of several recent assaults involving Ukrainian victims.

Police detained two women on 14 August over an attack on Ukrainian men outside a Poznań restaurant the previous day. A video showed one woman insulting, spitting at, and striking the men.

In July, three men allegedly beat a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after asking whether they were Ukrainian. In Łódź, a man allegedly attacked a passerby he mistook for Ukrainian, breaking his nose and jaw.

The violence has prompted public protests. On 9 August, the Committee for the Defense of Democracy organized “Don’t be indifferent” rallies in 22 cities. Two days earlier, Warsaw organizers delivered a petition with more than 11,000 signatures calling for government action against attacks on Ukrainians.

Deepening Polish-Ukrainian rift and decline in relations

The rise in anti-Ukrainian violence in Poland has unfolded amid worsening political relations between Kyiv and Warsaw. Polish support for accepting Ukrainian refugees fell from 94% in March 2022 to 48% by early 2026, while politicians increasingly use Ukraine as a wedge issue.

Historical disputes over the Volhynia massacres and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) have also strained relations. The rift sharpened after Zelenskyy signed a decree granting a Ukrainian special forces unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced on 19 June that he had decided to revoke Zelenskyy’s Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor.

Russia has built or expanded at least 10 drone bases along its borders with Ukraine and Belarus, creating launch capacity for newer jet-powered attack drones, the most powerful of which could reach Warsaw, The Telegraph reported on 16 August 2026.

The network expands Russia’s capacity for mass drone attacks on Ukraine, while some sites could later threaten NATO. The findings come as Russia is also expanding bases and other military infrastructure along NATO’s northern and Baltic borders. The Telegraph found no evidence that Moscow is planning such an attack.

Seven of the 10 sites were used during recent bombardments of Kyiv, tracking data cited by The Telegraph showed. Using leaked documents, satellite imagery, and DroneSec's analysis, the newspaper identified at least 59 launch rails—tracks that launch fixed-wing drones without runways.

Around 20 appeared long enough for Russia’s latest long-range models, while one base could reportedly store over 1,000 drones.

Leaked Ukrainian documents cited by The Telegraph say the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 can carry 90-kilogram warheads. However, Ukrainian military intelligence puts the Geran-4’s range at up to 450 kilometers, while the larger Geran-5 has a stated range of up to 1,000 kilometers — enough to reach Warsaw from several of the new sites.

DroneSec founder Mike Monnik said expanded launch capacity and harder-to-intercept technology together increase pressure on Ukrainian air defenses.

Russia builds military infrastructure along NATO’s northern flank

Russia is also expanding military infrastructure elsewhere along NATO’s borders. A Nordic-Baltic investigation identified new or expanded infrastructure from Norway to Kaliningrad, with potential capacity for up to 115,000 personnel.

Satellite imagery showed new barracks, ammunition warehouses, and expanded bases near NATO’s northern and Baltic members.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, assessed that the construction likely supports future Russian operations against NATO rather than an imminent attack. Most Russian combat power remains committed to Ukraine, it said.

Other drone hubs support rapid Russian attacks

Russia has already built comparable hubs for attacks on Ukraine. Satellite imagery analyzed by the open-source intelligence group Strategic Aviation of Russia showed 10 additional launchers under construction at Tsymbulova in Oryol Oblast, following the start of work on 22 April 2026.

At occupied Donetsk Airport, the group identified enlarged launch pads, roads to a Geran and Gerbera drone warehouse, and the apparent construction of another storage building.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it struck Shahed storage and launch sites at Primorsko-Akhtarsk on 2 August 2025. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi reported hitting drone logistics, warhead-storage, and preparation facilities at Donetsk Airport on 30 December 2025.

Two adults allegedly attacked a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl and her 12-year-old brother after hearing them speak Ukrainian, Ukraine’s Consulate General in Gdańsk said. The attack occurred on 14 August 2026 in a park near a railway station in Bydgoszcz, north-central Poland.

The case comes amid a documented rise in anti-Ukrainian violence in Poland, with recent attacks reported throughout the country. Recent incidents include attacks on Ukrainians in Poznań and Wrocław, as well as on people mistaken for Ukrainians or defending them. Police data obtained by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita showed 180 hate-crime reports involving Ukrainian citizens in the first half of 2026, over 30% more than a year earlier.

The pair, a man and woman with a small dog, shouted obscenities and made nationality-based threats, the consulate said.

“They twisted a child’s arm, broke a toy drone, and threw fragments at the boy,” the Ukrainian consulate said, adding that the fragments scratched him.

The consulate said a complaint had been filed, police were searching for the pair, and the children were physically safe but severely stressed. It urged witnesses to contact the police. Polish police had not commented by the time of publication.

Other attacks on Ukrainians in Poland

The attack on the children came amid a string of assaults on Ukrainians across Polish cities.

Shortly after midnight on 13 August 2026, an intoxicated woman insulted two Ukrainian men, spat at one, and struck one of them outside a restaurant in Poznań, according to Polish media. Police detained her and another woman the following day.

In July, three men allegedly beat a young Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after first asking whether they were Ukrainian. Police detained two suspects and continued searching for the third.

That month, a man in Łódź attacked a passerby he supposedly mistook for a Ukrainian, breaking his nose and jaw. Three men also reportedly beat a 60-year-old Pole who intervened when they harassed a Ukrainian teenager on a Poznań tram.

The deepening Polish-Ukrainian rift and decline in relations

The attacks coincide with a broader decline in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Polish support for accepting Ukrainian refugees fell from 94% in March 2022 to 48% by early 2026, while politicians increasingly use Ukraine as a wedge issue.

Much of the fallout stems from disputes over the Volhynia massacres—the 1943–44 mass killings of Polish civilians by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Polish retaliatory violence against Ukrainian civilians.

The dispute escalated after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a 26 May decree granting a Ukrainian special forces unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded on 19 June by stripping Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest state honor.

Former Polish prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński accused groups in western Ukraine of desecrating remains and stealing WWII-era victims’ jewelry. The leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) wrote on X on 14 August 2026 that his party would demand Polish government intervention.

Kaczyński’s claim comes amid growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland and a dispute with Kyiv over how Polish wartime victims are remembered. However, Kaczyński’s X post named no location and provided no public evidence, while authorized Polish-Ukrainian teams continue exhuming and reburying Polish victims.

“Illegal excavations at the sites of former Polish villages in Eastern Galicia are turning out to be real,” Kaczyński wrote, referring to a historical region now largely in western Ukraine.

He called the alleged looters “black diggers,” a term for people who dig through burials or archaeological sites for valuables. He said they were pilfering the graves of Poles killed in the World War II-era Volhynia massacres and alleged that local Ukrainian officials were allowing it.

Kaczyński said PiS would appeal to Poland’s state authorities, including the Foreign Ministry, and demand “explanations and a response.”

The evidence described by PiS has not been made public. Onet reported that it was unclear which incidents he meant and that neither government had responded at the time. PiS spokesperson Rafał Bochenek later told the publication Interia that citizens had sent photographs allegedly showing damaged graves and listings for excavated objects. Interia published neither.

Polish-Ukrainian teams continue authorized exhumations

Meanwhile, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the country's state historical institute, said Ukraine authorized its latest excavations at Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka in Volyn.

From 13 July to 7 August, Polish and Ukrainian specialists recovered 55 victims, including 26 children. They also secured more than 300 personal items and pieces of clothing. The remains are due to be buried at Ostrówki cemetery on 30 August.

The excavation followed a wider thaw. Ukraine lifted its moratorium on Polish searches, while joint teams exhumed and reburied 42 people at Puźniki in 2025. Both countries have exchanged lists of sites for further searches.

Historical disputes deepen the Polish-Ukrainian rift

Relations between Kyiv and Warsaw worsened after Ukraine gave a military unit the honorary title “Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)."

The UPA fought for Ukrainian independence but is held responsible in Poland for the World War II-era massacres of Polish civilians. Polish President Karol Nawrocki later stripped President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor.

Violence is also rising on the Polish streets. Reports of suspected hate crimes against Ukrainians in Poland rose by more than 30% in the first half of 2026, even as anti-xenophobic voices became more visible online. Kaczyński’s claim adds an unverified criminal allegation to the dispute.

On 14 August 2026, Polish broadcaster RMF FM identified American-Ukrainian rapper and video blogger Kyivstoner as the previously unnamed target of an alleged Russian-directed assassination plot in Warsaw. The case comes as European authorities investigate suspected Russian attacks and sabotage across the continent.

The alleged plot against Kyivstoner comes amid attacks on Kremlin critics abroad, including the fatal shooting of a Russian opposition artist in Poland in June.

Polish authorities disclosed the Kyivstoner's case on 13 August but withheld the target’s identity. RMF’s identification points to a possible motive, though it relies on unverified allegations from the FSB, Russia's domestic security agency that Kyivstoner of managed drone deliveries intended for attacks near Moscow.

Who is Kyivstoner?

Kyivstoner was born Albert Vasiliev and uses the name Slevin Dadyan on his US passport. He gained attention through humorous videos and the Ukrainian group Hryby before releasing solo tracks, including “Leto” (Summer) and “Zvuk” (Sound).

In a 2025 interview, Vasiliev voiced support for Ukrainians and opposition to Russian occupation, saying Russian ruler Vladimir Putin made him angry and that he wanted civilians and soldiers to stop dying.

In July 2026, Russia’s FSB accused Kyivstoner of overseeing logistics for a foiled drone attack on a defense enterprise near Moscow.

The agency alleged that 35 drones assembled in Kyiv were concealed in a shipment of ceramic tiles and smuggled into Russia through Slovakia, Poland, and Belarus. Russian authorities also added Vasiliev to a register of people they label as involved in extremist or terrorist activity.

Vasiliev responded on Instagram by mocking Russia's allegation, saying he had been relaxing and playing video games rather than organizing an attack.

Russian authorities also accuse him of cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence. He denies the accusations, and RMF offered no independent evidence to substantiate them.

Suspect detained before alleged attack

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Polish services detained the Russian suspect on 7 August, stopping the alleged attack “at the last minute.” US services assisted the operation. A Polish court remanded the man in custody for three months.

The journalists described the Russian citizen as a native of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. Tusk said the target, who holds Ukrainian and US passports, was “inconvenient to the Putin regime.”

The prime minister called it the first Russian-ordered attempt of its kind against a US citizen in another NATO country.

Killings and disrupted plots across Europe

Throughout Europe, Russia has tried to hunt down and kill anti-Kremlin critics and supporters of Ukraine. In June, Russian opposition artist Robert Kuzovkov, known as Semyon Skrepetsky, was shot dead in eastern Poland. Hours earlier, he had reported threats from “Russian patriots.” Polish authorities detained two Belarusian nationals, but have not attributed the killing to Moscow.

US and German services also reportedly foiled a Russian plot against Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger in 2024. German intelligence later treated the surveillance of Bavarian drone manufacturer Donaustahl’s CEO as a suspected planned assassination.

Polish police detained two women in connection with an attack on Ukrainian men outside a Poznań restaurant, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński announced. The incident comes as Polish-Ukrainian relations grow more strained and public attitudes toward Ukrainians worsen. The incident occurred shortly after midnight on 13 August on Półwiejska Street.

Police data obtained by Rzeczpospolita show 180 hate-crime reports involving Ukrainian citizens in the first half of 2026, over 30% more than a year earlier. Police have not said whether they are treating the Poznań case as a hate crime, although the recording includes nationality-based abuse.

One woman insulted two Ukrainian men, spat at one, knocked over a restaurant parasol, and struck one of the men, the Polish radio station RMF FM reported.

Regional police spokesperson Iwona Liszczyńska said officers responded to reports of two apparently intoxicated women. However, the women had left before officers arrived. Police contacted the restaurant manager, who filed a formal complaint on the morning of 14 August. Officers had already begun identifying the women before the complaint was filed.

Kierwiński first reported that police had detained one woman and identified the other. He later announced the second woman’s detention and declared “zero tolerance for aggression and hatred.”

Previous attacks on Ukrainians in Poland

Kierwiński’s warning followed a series of attacks against Ukrainians in Poland this year. In July, three men allegedly beat a Ukrainian couple in Wrocław after asking whether the woman was Ukrainian. Police detained two suspects and treated the assault as a nationality-motivated hate crime.

In May, police detained five suspects aged 15 to 18 after an attack on three Ukrainian teenagers in Warsaw. One of them, 16-year-old Artem, suffered a fractured skull. 

Earlier in July, two men linked to Poland’s far right confronted a Ukrainian woman at her legal-aid office in Poznań. They demanded entry and asked whether she supported Stepan Bandera, a WWII-era Ukrainian nationalist disliked by many Poles.

Historical dispute deepens political rift

The Poznań incident comes as anti-Ukrainian themes have gained ground in Polish far-right politics, while Warsaw and Kyiv remain divided over the WWII-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Many Ukrainians honor the UPA for resisting Soviet rule. Poland holds it responsible for massacring Polish civilians. 

Poland and Ukraine’s dispute over the Volhynia massacres, exhumations, and UPA symbols has prompted protests and a diplomatic clash over state honors. Police have not linked the Poznań attack to that dispute. 

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said authorities had detained a Russian citizen recruited by Moscow to kill a man in Warsaw. The target holds US and Ukrainian passports, the Associated Press (AP) reported on 13 August. Tusk said Polish security services stopped the alleged attack “at the last minute.” 

Since 2022, AP has mapped about 200 acts of sabotage, arson, and disruption across Europe that officials have linked to Russia. European governments say the campaign aims to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters and disrupt military aid, while Ukrainian authorities report similar recruitment tactics inside Ukraine.

The suspect was detained on 7 August and remanded for three months, Warsaw police said. Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister overseeing Poland’s intelligence services, said the operation involved US services.

PM Tusk called it the first Russian-ordered attempt of its kind against a US citizen in another NATO country. He said the target was “inconvenient to the Putin regime,” without explaining why.

In their bulletin, Reuters reported that Russia’s Warsaw embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moscow denies conducting a sabotage campaign in Europe.

Russia has already gone after a German arms CEO and critics of the Kremlin

European authorities had already reported plots against arms-industry figures supplying Ukraine. CNN reported in 2024 that US and German services foiled a plot against Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger. 

Former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev said an intelligence insider told him he was on Russia’s kill list. He also warned Putin critic Garry Kasparov that a Russian agent trained in assassination had infiltrated exile groups to approach him.

Russia has also been accused of targeting Kremlin opponents abroad. In June, Kremlin critic Robert Kuzovkov was shot dead in Poland. Tusk said the killing resembled a political assassination, but Warsaw has not attributed it to Russia.

Russia uses disposable agents, not career spies

The alleged recruitment in Warsaw resembles tactics reported elsewhere in Europe. German investigators identified a former Ukrainian bricklayer and an untrained Romanian woman as the suspected operatives surveilling Stefan Thumann, head of Bavarian drone maker Donaustahl. German intelligence later classified the case as a suspected planned assassination.

Ukrainian authorities have reported similar recruitment at home. The SBU said an FSB-directed foreign pair killed Colonel Ivan Voronych in Kyiv in July 2025. Both suspects later died in a shootout with law enforcement.

Ukrainian police say Russian recruitment can escalate from surveillance and simple deliveries to arson, terrorism, and murder. Since the start of 2026, police and the SBU have registered 31 terrorist attacks and prevented another 14.

Bulgaria's interest in buying Poland's retiring MiG-29s has pushed Warsaw and Kyiv closer to finalizing their long-stalled swap, Polish officials say.

Poland and Ukraine are in the final stage of negotiating a deal to transfer Poland's aging MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for drones and Ukrainian drone-warfare know-how, with the jets potentially shipping within weeks, Polish outlet Wirtualna Polska reported, citing sources in the Polish Armed Forces and Defense Ministry. The report follows months of on-and-off talks that Poland's own officials have repeatedly declared both close to done and dead.

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said on Polsat News that Bulgaria's competing interest in the jets has "livened up" Warsaw's discussions with Kyiv. Bulgaria has told Poland that if Ukraine will not commit, Sofia would buy the jets itself, Tomczyk said.

"I hope it will be soon," Tomczyk said when asked when Poland intends to sign the agreement with Ukraine. He said Poland has laid out the technologies and know-how it wants from Ukraine in return, calling the exchange in both countries' interest. "Today I cannot say with 100% certainty that this matter will be finalized, but we hope so."

According to Wirtualna Polska, the deal covers Soviet-era jets Poland's air force is retiring as it phases in Western aircraft, in exchange for a large batch of Ukrainian drones of various types and the transfer of Ukrainian combat know-how. The outlet reports Poland wants data on strike-drone communications links, control principles, footage of strikes on targets, and physical samples of the hardware itself.

Poland's Defense Ministry has said the process picked up pace after Rustem Umerov took over as head of Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tasking him with negotiating drone agreements. A source involved in the talks told Wirtualna Polska that Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point has offered to supply Poland with 1,500 long-range drones, plus a matching batch if war breaks out — an offer the source said Poland regards cautiously, since a company citing force majeure in wartime could leave Warsaw without the hardware it was promised.

A deal that has collapsed and revived for a year

Poland and Ukraine signed a bilateral security agreement in July 2024 that raised the prospect of transferring a squadron of at least 14 Polish MiG-29s. By early 2026, Warsaw had narrowed the offer to six to eight jets. In June, Poland froze the transfer, with Deputy Defense Minister Tomczyk citing Ukraine's refusal to share its drone and counter-drone technology. Talks restarted in July after Kyiv sent Warsaw a letter with concrete proposals, and by 31 July, Poland said Ukraine had returned with a specific list of drones it would hand over — a proposal Poland's ministry was still reviewing.

Poland's ambassador to Ukraine, Vasyl Bodnar, told Ukrainska Pravda's Yevropeiska Pravda that dialogue continues but that several obstacles still stand in the way of the transfer.

Why this matters

The MiG-29 remains a core part of Ukraine's air force even as it shifts to F-16s, Mirages, and incoming Gripens — Ukrainian pilots already fly the Soviet-era jets and have adapted them to carry Western precision weapons, so a new batch could enter service without the delays a Western aircraft transition requires. Poland's own hesitation reflects the same trade-off every one of its allies faces: what it gives up in hardware, it wants back in the operational knowledge Ukraine has built fighting Russia's drone war for four years — knowledge with no equivalent on any NATO training ground.

Russia may expand hybrid attacks against Poland and the Baltic states, including infrastructure sabotage or false-flag attacks, Bloomberg reported on 12 August, citing an unnamed European intelligence official. 

The warnings come amid concern that Moscow wants to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters. The CIA warning follows Russian threats, incursions, alleged sabotage plots, and disinformation against Poland and the Baltic states. Most Western military aid reaches Ukraine through Poland, while the Baltic states rank among Kyiv’s strongest supporters. Sabotage of transport, energy, or communications can slow aid delivery and test NATO while hiding Russia’s role.

Separately, a European government official told Bloomberg that the CIA had warned countries in the region of a possible future Russian attack. The CIA declined to comment.

The same official said Russia might instead be creating the impression of an impending attack to sow fear as part of an information operation. The official saw no signs that Moscow was preparing a conventional attack or invasion.

Moscow tests NATO’s eastern flank

Poland and Lithuania had already raised similar concerns. In July, Poland said it had credible intelligence that Russia was planning new provocations. Lithuania later warned that Moscow might rebuild captured Ukrainian drones for false-flag strikes on critical infrastructure.

In September 2025, between 19 and 23 Russian drones entered Polish airspace, shutting down airports and damaging buildings. Poland closed four airports as NATO aircraft responded.

Meanwhile, five people are on trial in Lithuania over attacks allegedly organized for Russian military intelligence in 2024, Bloomberg reported. Lithuania has reinforced infrastructure sites and deployed troops since June.

These warnings and incidents place the CIA alert within a wider pattern of pressure on NATO’s eastern flank and Ukraine’s supporters. 

How Russia strikes without starting a war

Bloomberg cited several recent unexplained drone incidents in Germany alongside the CIA warning. Citing Die Zeit, Euromaidan Press reported that an explosive-laden drone struck the wing of a parked Ukrainian An-124 at Leipzig-Halle airport and failed to detonate. A US Defense Department official in Europe told CNN that Washington assessed the drone belonged to Russian intelligence. 

Bloomberg also reported that a cargo plane hit an unidentified object and that drones appeared over a military base the following day. It did not connect either incident to Russia.

More broadly, Russian hybrid operations have grown sharply since the full-scale invasion. CSIS found that attacks in Europe tripled from 2023 to 2024, after quadrupling the previous year. Separately, the US Helsinki Commission mapped nearly 150 operations in NATO territory attributed to or suspected of Russia between February 2022 and November 2024.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told Euromaidan Press in February that attacks on ports, railways, and cables can probe routes needed for NATO reinforcements. Their deniability raises the political cost of responding.

By hiding its role, Moscow can disrupt support for Ukraine and test NATO without openly starting a war. 

Poland will decide within days whether to send Ukraine another batch of Patriot interceptor missiles, Deputy Defense Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said in a radio interview RMF24. Any transfer, she said, has to be judged first against Poland's own security.

A Russian strike on NATO soil is now moving Warsaw where months of Ukrainian appeals had not. Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz leans toward sending more interceptors after a Russian missile crashed inside Poland on 30 July, and that he would rather one be shot down over Ukraine than reach Polish soil.

Tusk had signaled at the end of July that Warsaw would soon weigh sending more Patriots. Sobkowiak-Czarnecka's remarks are the first to put a timeline on that decision.

Warsaw had been split for weeks over whether giving up the missiles was the right call. She set that argument aside, saying only that a decision is a matter of the coming days.

A second handover from a thin stock

This would not be the first transfer. In the spring, Poland quietly gave Ukraine five PAC-3 MSE interceptors — the missiles a Patriot battery uses to stop ballistic threats — a move confirmed only in July, when the defense ministry declassified its aid records and Prime Minister Donald Tusk put the number at five.

The disclosure drew sharp criticism at home. Opposition figures noted that the PAC-3 is the only interceptor Poland holds capable of downing Russia's Iskander ballistic missiles — the same class of weapon now crossing into Polish airspace.

Why the interceptors are so scarce

PAC-3 interceptors are among the hardest munitions in NATO to spare. The United States builds them at a rate that does not cover its own needs, and only a handful of alliance members operate them at all.

Ukraine has been pressing for them for months. In early July, after one of the largest air attacks of the war, Kyiv appealed to nearly 40 countries to release Patriot missiles from existing stocks, warning that its air defenses cannot stop Russia's ballistic missiles without them.

Poland holds roughly 200 of the interceptors, by Ukrainian estimates — its own shield against the missiles now reaching its border. Kosiniak-Kamysz's reasoning turns that overlap into the case for giving some away: better the interceptor meets the missile over Ukraine than over Poland.

The transfer would come with Polish-Ukrainian relations at their lowest point in years. In May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy granted a special forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA" — the wartime insurgent army Poland blames for the Volhynia massacres of the 1940s, which Warsaw recognizes as genocide. Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded in June by stripping Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, the country's highest honor; three former Ukrainian presidents returned their own in solidarity, and Nawrocki has since tied Ukraine's path into the EU to the unresolved history. Yet the friction runs mostly at the presidential level. The aid decisions sit with the Tusk government, and it has kept the weapons — and now, in all likelihood, the interceptors — moving to Kyiv regardless.

Demonstrators gathered in 22 Polish cities on Sunday, 9 August, to protest a rise in violence against Ukrainians, with most rallies beginning after 17:00, RMF24 reported.

The Sunday rallies followed a demonstration two days earlier, on Friday, 7 August, under the slogan "My Poland doesn't hit, insult, or incite," when organizers submitted a petition signed by more than 11,000 people to the prime minister's office and the Ministry of Interior and Administration, demanding decisive measures against violent attacks on Ukrainian citizens.

Nationwide campaign led by pro-democracy group

The Committee for the Defense of Democracy organized the nationwide campaign. Organizers said the demonstrations respond to increasingly frequent verbal and physical attacks on people targeted because of their origin, language, or appearance. The rallies were also meant to show solidarity with those experiencing violence and discrimination.

A slogan from Auschwitz

The phrase that became the demonstrations' slogan, "Don't be indifferent," was spoken by Marian Turski on 27 January 2020, during commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Turski, a former prisoner of the camp, used the speech to urge people not to accept cruel treatment of minorities, violations of human rights, and historical falsehoods.

Recent incidents

The number of attacks on Ukrainians in Poland has sharply increased in recent weeks. In Kraków, a 39-year-old man who had verbally insulted two people of Ukrainian nationality turned himself in at a police station on 8 August and was detained, according to reporting cited a day before the Sunday protests.

Separately, Tobiasz Bocheński, a member of the European Parliament and former candidate for mayor of Warsaw, said that if the Law and Justice party came to power, it would ensure the deportation of Ukrainian men of conscription age who are not legally employed in Poland. Poland's Ministry of Interior and Administration said such statements amount to populism.

The US Army has suddenly removed the general in charge of the corps that helps coordinate American support to Ukraine. The Army abruptly fired Lieutenant General Charles Costanza, commander of V Corps, roughly two months before his scheduled departure, ABC News reports.

The corps he led is central to the US role on NATO's front line with Russia. Costanza had commanded V Corps since April 2024, a corps partly based in Poland that has taken on an increasingly prominent role since Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, helping coordinate US military support for Ukraine and managing the American presence on NATO's eastern flank.

The reason has not been made public

The Army confirmed the removal but not its cause. A service spokesperson said the circumstances remained unclear, and the Army said the matter was "referred to the appropriate authority in accordance with Army regulations," according to The Hill.

Reporting points away from politics. Two US officials told journalists that the removal was not political and was not initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with one source citing conduct that could ground a commander's removal at any level and a former defense official citing alcohol problems. Brigadier General John Mountford, the deputy commander for readiness, has begun his service as acting commander.

It comes amid a wider shake-up of the top brass

The timing places it in a turbulent period for US military leadership. Costanza's removal comes amid a broader shake-up in which more than two dozen senior officers have been removed or sidelined under Hegseth, often without public explanation.

The backdrop is US force posture in Poland

The command change lands amid questions over the US presence in Poland. This year, the Pentagon canceled a planned deployment of a Fort Hood-based armored brigade to Poland, and after the cancellation drew criticism in Warsaw, President Donald Trump announced the US would deploy 5,000 troops in the country.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki used a speech marking his first year in office to restate that Poland will keep backing Ukraine's war against Russia—and to frame that backing as cold strategic interest rather than solidarity, warning in the same speech that continued help does not extend to tolerating Ukrainian nationalist symbols" on Polish soil. He spoke on 6 August at a ceremony in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, reported by RMF FM.

The remarks land at the hottest point yet in a Polish-Ukrainian memory row that has stripped Kyiv of much goodwill from its most important frontline ally. Poland's interest, Nawrocki said, is that Ukrainians fight "as long as possible and as effectively as possible" against Russia, keeping it far from Poland—help offered not out of shared cause but because a Ukraine that bleeds Russia serves Warsaw. Coming from the country most vital to Ukraine's supply lines, it is a statement of support recast as conditional self-interest.

Support as strategy, not solidarity

"Poland's interest is that Ukraine and Ukrainian soldiers cope as well as possible with the post-Soviet Russian Federation and keep it as far from Poland as possible. That is obvious; that is the Polish state's strategy," Nawrocki said. "Let them kill the Soviets who attacked them—it does not hurt us Poles at all. In this they can always count on our help, because where a Muscovite is beaten, Poland helps, even if it does not take part directly in this war."

The register was deliberate. Nawrocki, a historian who ran the Institute of National Remembrance before winning the presidency, used the pejoratives "Soviets" and "Muscovites" for Russians throughout, casting Polish aid as a matter of keeping the fight on the far side of the border.

The red line: no Bandera flags

The support came fenced. "It is also Poland's strategic interest that Bandera flags do not fly in Warsaw or anywhere in Poland," Nawrocki said, promising to help "but always saying: Poland first, Poles first"—not, he added, "thoughtlessly sending fleet after fleet without analysis, on phone calls and smiles."

The condition points straight at the dispute that has consumed the relationship since May, when Zelenskyy signed a decree granting a special-forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA," the insurgent army Poland's parliament holds responsible for the Volhynia killings of tens of thousands of Poles and has declared a genocide. Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle in response; in July he pressed parliament to ban the UPA's red-and-black flag by law.

Moscow moves to widen the gap

Russia moved to pry the crack open within hours. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova derided Nawrocki as a former Gdansk war-museum director whose "clinical Russophobia," she claimed, was affecting his judgment, and reminded him that Russia and Poland share a border "with no Ukraine and no Ukrainians between us"—the erasure of Ukraine stated plainly, from Moscow's own podium.

That is the move Warsaw itself has warned about. Polish officials have cautioned that Russia would seek to exploit the Ukraine tensions, and Polish services recently detained a group accused of recruiting Ukrainians for paid anti-Ukrainian rallies on Russian instructions. The memory feud, as one Polish advocate for Ukraine told Euromaidan Press in June, is theater that serves only one audience—the one in the Kremlin.

NATO scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian planes far more often over its eastern flank this July than a year earlier, the alliance's Allied Joint Force Command in Brunssum announced on 5 August. Each scramble is a launch to intercept an unidentified aircraft. The command linked the surge to Russian military planes repeatedly probing the edges of allied airspace.

Russian pressure on NATO's eastern edge has built for years, but this summer the alliance changed how it answers: it gave pilots authority that includes destroying "objects that pose a threat," ending a peacetime escort format that had held since 2004. More probing now meets a harder line.

Compared with July 2025, these scrambles rose by more than 250%, the command said.

"Russian military aircraft repeatedly flew close to NATO airspace without a flight plan and transponder signal, leaving our fighters to launch, intercept, and identify them," it added.

Polish jets keep meeting Russian spy planes over the Baltic

The report landed amid a run of intercepts near the Baltic Sea. Poland's Defense Ministry, under Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, reported its fighters intercepted a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane on 4 August, 56 kilometers northwest of Koszalin in West Pomeranian Voivodeship.

Explore further

NATO fighters intercept six Russian military aircraft over the Baltic in a single day

A day earlier, the minister reported, Polish crews had caught another Russian reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic near Łeba, its transponder off. Allied pilots have run similar missions for months: French and Swedish jets met six Russian aircraft over the Baltic in a single day in June, and crews scrambled through last fall to track flights between mainland Russia and the Kaliningrad exclave.

What are the surge forces on the alliance

Every unannounced flight burns allied flight hours and holds interceptors on standby. NATO members have already fired on Russian drones crossing their skies this summer, and the more often crewed planes go dark near the border, the higher the odds a close encounter escalates. The odds of a close encounter that escalates.

Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed legislation designating July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance for Poles who were victims of Volyn massacres, the Polish outlet RMF24 reported on July 2.

The law passed both houses of Poland's parliament with reportedly near-unanimous support. Lawmakers said victims of the massacres deserve a permanent place in the nation's collective memory.

The law states that from 1939 to 1946, members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and other nationalist groups carried out mass killings of Polish civilians in the Volyn region, now part of modern-day Ukraine.

The Volyn massacres remain a deeply sensitive and divisive issue in Polish-Ukrainian relations. In April, a team of Polish and Ukrainian researchers resumed the first exhumation in western Ukraine since 2017 — a symbolic breakthrough following years of tension. The moratorium had been imposed by Ukraine after a wave of vandalism targeting Ukrainian memorials in Poland.

The excavation began at the destroyed village of Puzhnyky in Ternopil Oblast, where UPA fighters are believed to have killed between 50 and 120 Poles in February 1945.

In recent months, the Polish and Ukrainian governments have made efforts to resolve the issue of the Volyn exhumations, with Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk announcing a "breakthrough" in January.

Last year Polish officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz and former Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski, warned that Ukraine's progress toward EU accession could be blocked unless Kyiv fully addresses the legacy of the Volyn massacre and allows further exhumations of Polish victims.

Poland's Institute of National Remembrance estimates that approximately 100,000 Poles were killed during the Volyn massacres. Ukrainian historians argue that thousands of Ukrainians were also killed in retaliatory actions and insist that the conflict be viewed as mutual ethnic violence rather than genocide.

In 2016, the Polish Parliament officially recognized the events as genocide. Ukrainian and many Western scholars, however, classify them as ethnic cleansing, and debate continues over both the terminology and historical responsibility.

Despite close cooperation in defense and diplomacy since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the legacy of Volyn remains a potential stumbling block in Ukraine's integration with Europe.

July 11 will now be commemorated annually in Poland.

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Norway will send F-35 fighter jets to Poland in the fall to protect the Rzeszow-Yasenka airport, one of the key transportation hubs for NATO military aid to Ukraine, Norwegian Defense Ministry announced on June 30.

The news came as Russia has escalated attacks against Ukrainian cities over the past weeks, launching record 400-500 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) per night.

Norway is thus strengthening its contribution to NATO's air and missile defense, while the main goal of the mission is to support the protection of Polish airspace and a key logistics center for assistance to Ukraine, the statement read.

"This is a vital contribution. We are helping ensure that support to Ukraine reaches its destination, and that Ukraine can continue its fight for freedom," Norwegian Defense Minister Tore Sandvik said.

The Rzeszow-Jasionka airport is located less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Ukrainian border and transports a significant percentage of Western materiel bound for the front lines in Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that 90% of aid for Ukraine was going through the airport in Rzeszow as of Novermber 2024.

It is also a main stopover point for foreign leadership traveling to Kyiv on official visits.

In January, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Berlin will deploy the promised Patriot air defenses around the Polish airport to protect it.

Smashing previous monthly record, Russia launches 5,337 kamikaze drones against Ukraine during June

Russia launched a record 5,337 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine in June, according to data from the Ukrainian Air Force and Dragon Capital, smashing the previous record of 4,198 set in March. Russia’s bombardments, a fact of life after three years of full-scale war, have intensified dramatically in May

The Kyiv IndependentYuliia Taradiuk

Outgoing Polish President Andrzej Duda arrived in Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a farewell gesture ahead of his departure from office in August, Duda announced on social media.

"President Duda has stood by Ukraine's side during the most difficult times of Russia's full-scale aggression," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X on June 28, which is also Ukraine's Constitution Day.  

"We are grateful to him and all Poles who have shown true solidarity with Ukraine."

Upon his arrival, Duda joined Zelensky in a wreath-laying ceremony honoring fallen soldiers at an event marking Ukraine’s Constitution Day.

The two leaders discussed the further development of relations between Kyiv and Warsaw at the EU level and in coordination with NATO partners.

"In recent months, we have been implementing some fairly substantial Ukrainian-Polish agreements on defense cooperation," the Ukrainian president said.

Zelensky also awarded Duda the Order of Freedom, one of Ukraine’s highest honors.

"Andrzej has been with Ukraine since the first days of the war, always side by side, a reliable ally and a true friend. This is undoubtedly the level of relations we want to preserve and strengthen with Poland," Zelensky said.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Poland has emerged as one of Ukraine’s most committed allies, providing weapons, sheltering millions of refugees, and rallying international support.

Over time, the relations between the two countries has faced strains due to political disagreements, economic fatigue, and disputes over grain imports and historical grievances.

In early June, conservative historian Karol Nawrocki won the second round of the Polish presidential election with 50.89% of the vote.

He has previously voiced opposition to Ukraine's membership in the EU and NATO, despite supporting Ukraine's sovereignty.

From unity to uncertainty: Central Europe reconsiders its Ukraine stance

In the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the decisive support Kyiv found among its neighbors to the west is beginning to show cracks. Once resolute Poland is seeing rising skepticism toward Ukraine, underscored by President-elect Karol Nawrocki’s election victory. Slovakia’s pro-Ukrainian government was ousted by Russian-friendly populists

The Kyiv IndependentMartin Fornusek

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include the joint statement issued by the ministers of the Baltic states, Nordic countries, and Poland.

A coalition of European Union countries is pushing to bar Russian citizens who participated in the war against Ukraine from entering the Schengen Area, citing serious security concerns,  Estonian broadcaster ERR reported on June 19.

The call comes as Russia increased its hybrid operations targeting the European Union. EU security agencies have repeatedly warned of Russian-linked sabotage operations, including arson attacks, orchestrated by Moscow as part of hybrid warfare strategies.

Interior ministers from the Baltic states, Nordic countries, and Poland met in Tallinn on June 19, where they issued a joint statement confirming their intent to prevent entry into the visa-free Schengen zone for Russians who took part in the war against Ukraine, ERR reported.

"There are hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who have fought against Ukraine," Estonian Interior Minister Igor Taro said following the meeting. "We must take a clear stance; these individuals cannot freely travel across Schengen."

"We will not issue them residence permits or visas," he added. "This group, which has been killing and destroying, poses a very significant security threat to all of us."

The ministers emphasized that this restriction should remain in place even after active hostilities cease in Ukraine.

"Member States should take all necessary measures to ensure that individuals who are or have been contracted by the Russian armed forces or other armed groups acting on behalf of the regime are not allowed to undermine our security or move freely within the Schengen Area," the joint statement read.

The high-level meeting also included European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner, as well as representatives from the EU border agency Frontex.

The Schengen Area allows for visa-free travel across 29 European countries for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. While several EU member states have imposed national restrictions on Russian travelers, others continue processing applications, keeping access routes open.

Latvia has been among the most vocal proponents of stricter visa policies for Russian nationals. Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze urged on May 25 all EU countries to suspend visa issuance to Russians, citing escalating security threats from Moscow.

"Latvia calls on the EU countries to halt visa issuance for Russian citizens, citing security concerns," Braze wrote on X. She noted that Schengen visa approvals for Russian nationals had surged by 25% in 2024 compared to 2023.

Latvia imposed entry restrictions in September 2022 as part of a coordinated effort with Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. Czechia followed suit in October 2022.

Concerns over the abuse of Schengen visas and diplomatic privileges have intensified amid a wave of suspected Russian sabotage and espionage on EU soil. Polish and Czech authorities have recently led an effort to limit the movement of Russian diplomats within the bloc, targeting individuals allegedly working under diplomatic cover for Russian intelligence services.

Latvia prohibits Russian, Belarusian citizens from purchasing real estate

The bill — which carves out exceptions for EU and Latvian permanent residence holders, Belarusian refugees, and repatriates — establishes the new restrictions under the pretenses of protecting the country’s national security.

The Kyiv IndependentDmytro Basmat

British fighter jets intercepted a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft that violated airspace over the Baltic Sea on the morning of June 13, Poland's military command reported.

"This is another case of provocative testing of the readiness of NATO countries' systems," the statement said, adding that NATO command structures are now analyzing the incident.

The Russian Il-20, based on the Il-18 transport aircraft, is used for electronic surveillance and reconnaissance missions. It is equipped with radar and signal intelligence gear designed to collect information on military infrastructure and communication networks.

According to the military command, the aircraft entered Baltic Sea airspace at approximately 10:50 a.m. and was promptly intercepted by two British fighter jets operating out of Poland.

No further details were disclosed about the exact location of the encounter or how long the Russian aircraft remained in restricted airspace.

The incident adds to a series of aerial provocations reported by NATO allies since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Poland has repeatedly scrambled jets in response to Russian missile and drone attacks near its border.

On Feb. 11, a Russian Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft flew into Polish airspace over the Bay of Gdansk for more than a minute. Moscow attributed the incursion to a navigational error, but Polish officials dismissed the claim as implausible.

Poland shares a long border with Ukraine and a northern coastline along the Baltic Sea, where Russia's militarized Kaliningrad exclave is located.

Warsaw has repeatedly warned that Russia's ongoing aerial provocations could lead to a dangerous escalation if not firmly countered.

How an Israel-Iran war could help Russia’s economy — and deprive Ukraine of weapons

Israel’s “preemptive” strikes against Iran targeting the country’s nuclear program and killing top military officials could have far-reaching implications for Ukraine and could boost Russia’s ability to continue its full-scale invasion, experts have told the Kyiv Independent. Iran has been one of Russia’s staunchest allies throughout the war, providing thousands

The Kyiv IndependentChris York