23 September 2026

Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said yesterday that Warsaw would help evacuate civilians from Lithuania if Russia attacked and would push for NATO Article 5 to be triggered. His remarks followed Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius saying Lithuania already has evacuation plans for several Russian threat scenarios, while 10 European countries this year agreed to prepare joint cross-border routes.

In Washington, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas confirmed today that two US battalions will arrive in Lithuania at the end of October. One will be a heavy unit and the other an engineering battalion, troop numbers will stay near 1,000, and the rotation will remain nine months long. President Gitanas Nauseda, meeting Palantir chief Alex Karp in New York, said Lithuania could become the company’s hub for the Baltics and NATO’s eastern flank. Lithuania and the United States are also deepening business and energy ties in New York.

In the Šalčininkai district, border guards today used anti-drone equipment to bring down a drone from Belarus carrying contraband cigarettes. Officers found the burnt drone near Antaniškiai village with 1,000 packs of Minsk Superslims worth 5,510 euros, taking this year’s tally of intercepted smuggling drones to 58.

The Seimas Committee on National Security and Defence is examining whether Lithuania’s second muftiate poses a national security risk. The prime minister said he has no information pointing to such a threat, while conservative lawmaker Dalia Asanavičiūtė-Gružauskienė wants the Justice Ministry to remove the body from the register if a risk is confirmed.

Lithuania handed Belarus a protest note over an airspace violation and a threat to civil aviation. The Foreign Ministry also proposed banning Russian oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from entering Lithuania.

Kyiv’s death toll from fresh Russian strikes rose to two, and drone attacks damaged warehouses and petrol stations in the city. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in New York that Russia was preparing a new large-scale attack on Ukraine and was using ballistic missiles to exploit gaps in Kyiv’s air defences.

In the Donetsk region, Russian guided bombs hit Oleksandrivka on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding four more, including a child. Police said cluster munitions were used in a separate strike on Kramatorsk, while rescuers in Oleksandrivka were searching rubble for eight more people feared trapped. In the Black Sea, a Russian strike on a commercial cargo ship in the Odesa region killed the vessel’s captain, a Ukrainian citizen, as the ship sailed under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. Zelenskiy also said Ukraine was ready to halt strikes on energy infrastructure if Russia accepted the same terms.

Poland said on Wednesday at 11:08 a.m. that a Russian Mi-8 military helicopter from Kaliningrad crossed about 300 metres into Polish airspace near Braniewo for 42 seconds. The breach came as Poland keeps round-the-clock surveillance and heightened air-defence readiness along NATO’s eastern flank. In Brussels, EU envoys on Monday agreed to remove Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from the bloc’s Russia sanctions list while extending restrictions on about 3,000 other people and companies until Sept. 22, 2029. In Hungary, the prosecutor general asked parliament to lift the immunity of Prime Minister Peter Magyar and two former ministers from Viktor Orban’s government in three criminal cases, including one over the alleged misuse of 47 million euros in public funds.

Sergei Lavrov said Russia would not halt its military operation in Ukraine or agree to a ceasefire during talks. At the same time, Russian strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region reached their fiercest level since March 2022.

Kyiv was hit by a Russian drone attack before Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, killing at least two people and injuring 25. In New York, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian intelligence sees Russia preparing a new mass strike and said Kyiv would stop attacks on energy infrastructure if Moscow accepted the same terms.

Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov are meeting in New York today as Russia intensifies air assaults on Ukraine and relies more heavily on ballistic missiles. NATO’s military command said this week that Vladimir Putin is becoming more reckless and more willing to take risks, but sees escalation and pressure as the more immediate threat than a direct attack on a NATO state. In the Strait of Hormuz, an unknown projectile hit a cargo ship, setting it ablaze and leaving it adrift after the crew was evacuated. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations centre said there were two casualties but did not say whether they were dead or injured.

North Korea has publicised a new weapons test watched by Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae near the country’s east coast. Analysts said state media images pointed to an upgraded short-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle, designated Hwasongpho-11Ma-1, that is harder for South Korean and U.S. defences to track and intercept.

Scientists said today they had directly detected radio signals from the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b, about 63.4 light years from Earth. The MeerKAT array in South Africa recorded the signal four times in 2025 and 2026, pointing to auroras and a magnetic field thousands of times stronger than Earth’s.

The Red Cross said it has had no access to prisoners held in Russia since 2024. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Washington had invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit and warned the war in Ukraine could spill into other countries.