Rutte calls Yahodyn drone strikes proof of Putin's desperation

Mark Rutte said Monday that Sunday's Russian drone strikes near the Ukraine-Poland border showed Vladimir Putin's "desperation and also his desire to sow fear and terror." He spoke at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "He thinks that he can stop us from supporting Ukraine and that he can undermine our unity. He is wrong. Our answer is to increase support," the secretary-general said. He also said the alliance would thicken its own defences along the eastern border with Russia. "Russia is growing increasingly reckless as it continues its terrible war against Ukraine."

One drone struck a locomotive on a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger service at Yahodyn, two kilometres from the Polish frontier. Ukrzaliznytsia said no one on that train was hurt. A diplomatic service running ahead of schedule had already cleared the station. On board that earlier train were former British prime minister Boris Johnson, former CIA director David Petraeus and, in some accounts, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. The railway company said those passengers may have been the aim. Another drone hit a petrol station near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk crossing. Further strikes landed in Volyn oblast, still close to Polish ground.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Moscow looked ready to push harder against Ukraine's European borders. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said Warsaw was treating the incident with "the utmost seriousness" and would raise security on its side of the line. British prime minister Andy Burnham's spokesman called the strike a futile attempt to break support for Kyiv. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stood with Poland's Radoslaw Sikorski in Kyiv on Sunday to make the same point in public.

Almanaque recorded the train hit earlier on Monday. Rutte's remarks change the file from an incident report into an alliance promise. He did not announce a new package with a dollar figure. He announced a direction: more support for Ukraine, more attention to the 32-member border with Russia. That is the sentence Warsaw wanted to hear while the locomotive still sat damaged on the platform. It is also the sentence Moscow can treat as proof that proximity works, even if it failed to hit the named passengers.

Two kilometres is not a NATO Article 5 event. It is close enough for Polish television. Rutte used that closeness to argue for more weapons and more air defence rather than for a new red line. The next test is whether the extra support arrives before the next drone does. Yahodyn is a freight and passenger gate. If Russia keeps aiming at the gate, the alliance will have to decide whether a railway two kilometres inside Ukraine is still only Ukraine's problem.