MIKA and WARSAW, Poland The hike to the site of what local authorities believe to be Russia's latest act of rail sabotage on Polish soil leads police officer Piotr Pokorski trudging through a couple of feet of snow across a stark white farm field, through a thatch of dead cattails and across a frozen creek before he pauses underneath an embankment. "The explosion happened here," he says, pointing to a small section of railroad track that catches the frozen sunlight, reflecting a bronze-colored sheen from a recent
Russian military intelligence is recruiting young people online to carry out arson and other acts of sabotage across Europe. In this week's issue, Joshua Yaffa reports on the Kremlin's secret campaign to undermine the West's support for Ukraine-and breaks down how "single-use agents" are being deployed across the Continent. Some of their missions are small-putting up posters, or picking up a package-while others involve physical attacks, for example setting off explosives and starting fires.
OPINION - The global terrorism landscape in 2026 - the 25 th anniversary year of the 9/11 terrorism attacks - is more uncertain, hybridized, and combustible than at any point since 9/11. Framing a sound U.S. counterterrorism strategy - especially in the second year of a Trump administration - will require more than isolated strikes against ISIS in Nigeria, punitive counterterrorism operations in Syria, or a tougher rhetorical posture.
Finnish police on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of damaging a telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia. The vessel was spotted with its anchor lowered near the site in Estonia's exclusive economic zone where telecom provider Elisa detected a fault early Wednesday. A Finnish border guard vessel and helicopter located the ship and ordered it to stop, raise its anchor, and move into Finnish territorial waters.
The new chief of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, will warn of "the acute threat posed by Russia" when she makes her first public speech later. She will highlight so-called hybrid warfare, which includes incidents such as cyber attacks and drones suspected of being launched near critical infrastructure by Russian proxies. Ms Metreweli will describe this as "an acute threat posed by an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia".
Andravia and Harbadus - two nations so often at odds with one another - were once again embroiled in conflict over the past seven days, which thoroughly tested NATO's cybersecurity experts' ability to coordinate defenses across battlefield domains. Around 1,500 practitioners took part in the annual battle that engulfed the island of Occasus-Icebergen, all working together to remediate cyberattacks on critical systems, the effects of which influenced how land, sea, and air forces were able to respond.
In the last few minutes, Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk has said that yesterday's disruption on a busy railway route between Warsaw and Lublin in eastern Poland was confirmed as caused by an explosive device placed on the track. Unfortunately, [our] worst fears have been confirmed. On the Warsaw-Lublin route (Mika village), an act of sabotage has occurred. The explosion of an explosive device destroyed the railway track, he said.
Drone sightings, threats and an arms race raise spectre of war. After nearly four years of war between Kyiv and Moscow, fighting is heating up on the front lines of eastern Ukraine. But with drones spotted at sensitive sites across the European Union, its leaders have declared Russia is fighting a hybrid war beyond Ukraine's borders. They say the bloc will protect every centimetre of its territory, as member states scale up military spending to heights not seen for decades.
We in the west used to play dirty and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe's pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy's achilles heel. The Berlin airlift is a good example of what we once did well and have since forgotten.
Germany will develop a 'comprehensive action plan' to counter what it sees as low-level hybrid warfare waged by Russia, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday. The newly formed National Security Council would "in the coming days" hold its inaugural meeting to work on the plan, Merz told parliament. Referencing mysterious drone flights that have caused chaos at European airports, Merz charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was subjecting Europe to "hybrid attacks".
Estonian authorities shut down a stretch of road that passes through Russian territory after an unusually large group of Russian soldiers appeared on the road last week. The incident, which occurred last week, was first reported by Estonian border guard service in a section of the two countries' share border called the Saatse Boot.
dozens of flights were cancelled and thousands of passengers left stranded on the eve of a German national holiday and the famous Oktoberfest. A week earlier, Copenhagen and Aalborg airports were closed following sightings of unmanned aerial systems in Danish airspace. In the month since a swarm of Russian drones violated Polish airspace — three were shot down — a rash of similar incidents has been reported across Germany, the Baltic and Nordic countries, often over power plants and military bases.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.
The September 26 video conference -- convened by EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius and involving several states on NATO's eastern flank, as well as Denmark and Ukraine -- aims to coordinate sensors, jammers and rapid-response rules so that small, cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be detected and neutralized before they threaten European civil aviation or critical bases.
