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Rescue workers put out a fire at a building damaged in a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 25, 2026.
Opinion

Russia's faster Shaheds could rival ballistic missiles this winter

by Oleksiy Moskalenko

A few months ago, the only particularly serious threat to Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities came from Russian and North Korean ballistic missiles. As the Ukrainian mil-tech industry and air defense units perfected their ability to intercept the common "Shahed" drones (now officially called Geran-2, although Ukrainians stick to the original Iranian name), raising the shoot-down rate to 90–95%, a shortage of anti-ballistic interceptor missiles seemed to be the main issue facing Ukraine in the upcom

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Russia's strike near Poland put Ukraine's railway lifeline in focus. But the bigger threat lies elsewhere

On Sept. 13, a Russian drone struck the locomotive of a Kyiv–Warsaw passenger train just 2 kilometers from the Polish border. The attack near Yahodyn caused no casualties, but it drew attention to one of Ukraine's most important links to the outside world amid the pressures of Russia's war — the railway. Ukrainian state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said its monitoring team detected the threat early enough to evacuate the crew before the strike on the locomotive. Russia has targeted Ukraine's

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