A second Russian drone hit Yahodyn in 15 days, and this one's blast wave reached the checkpoint building

A Russian jet-powered drone crashed near Ukraine's Yahodyn crossing with Poland on September 28, 2026, and its blast wave damaged the checkpoint building, Volyn Regional Military Administration head Roman Romaniuk said. It is the second Russian strike AirVeto has tracked at Yahodyn in 15 days, and the first of the two whose blast wave reached the checkpoint building itself.

The blast wave hit the terminal entrance, not the checkpoint directly

Romaniuk said the drone came down in a forest area near the village of Starovoitove, in Kovel district, next to the Yahodyn international checkpoint, during an air raid alert covering the Kamin-Kashyrskyi and Kovel districts. Mezha and UNITED24 Media both report there was no direct hit on the crossing itself - the drone crashed in the forest, not on the checkpoint. Its blast wave still damaged the checkpoint building at the terminal's entrance, per all three outlets, and no injuries or fatalities were reported.

Yahodyn is the Ukrainian side of the same crossing point as Dorohusk, Poland. This is the second time in 2026 that a Russian strike has landed at this specific crossing, not just somewhere in the border region.

Poland scrambled fighters and grounded Lublin's airspace as a precaution

The Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces scrambled fighter aircraft toward the border, UNITED24 Media reported. Ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance units went to high readiness. Air raid sirens sounded across the Lublin Voivodeship, on the Polish side of the border, per RBC-Ukraine as cited by UNITED24. No source, Polish or Ukrainian, reports the drone crossing into Polish airspace.

Lublin Voivodeship is the same Polish border region where AirVeto has reconstructed other Russian drones landing on NATO soil, including a Shahed drone found near Osiny in August 2025 after flying undetected for 2.5 hours. Yahodyn's strikes have stayed on the Ukrainian side of the line so far; Osiny shows this same border region has already carried an object across it.

It's the second strike at this crossing in 15 days

Russia last hit Yahodyn on September 13, 2026, when a drone destroyed the locomotive of a passenger train at the station, an event AirVeto reconstructed at the time. Ukrainian Railways said it was "quite likely" that strike had targeted a different, diplomatic train carrying former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other European officials, which had already crossed into Poland.

That strike hit rolling stock on the station's tracks; the drone itself did not strike the crossing. This time, the drone again crashed short of the checkpoint rather than hitting it directly. But its blast wave was the first in AirVeto's tracking of Yahodyn to damage the checkpoint building, rather than a train passing through the station. Two strikes at the same crossing in 15 days is a pattern specific to Yahodyn, not just a general risk spread across the wider Poland-Ukraine border.