Signal No. 155 · Poland to allow shoot-downs without seeing the target

Cezary Tomczyk, Poland's deputy defence minister, said on Monday at the military aviation works in Dęblin that the procedures for fighters and helicopters will change "in coming days", moving from "what in peacetime is standard, visual identification, to so-called positive identification". The difference, he said, "is fundamental. It concerns the ability to make a decision on shooting down a foreign aircraft based on radar readings and other information fed into the system." The pilot "will be able to use armament from a distance, utilising the aircraft or helicopter's systems". According to PAP, the decision to fire will rest with the pilot or the operational commander, and the indicators include radar tracks, entry into a no-fly zone and information from the Ukrainian side. The change was ordered by Major General Ireneusz Nowak, the operational commander, and will be introduced gradually.

Such options, Tomczyk said, were until now "usually reserved for a state of war or martial law"; with drones able to enter Polish territory any day, the ministry judged the change necessary. In peacetime, he explained, identification is by visual contact to limit the risk of mistaking a civil or allied aircraft. "We cannot be idle where threats are concerned, and there will be, everything points to it, only more threats."

Pre-authorisation was already in place. General Maciej Klisz, then operational commander, said last November that pilots had been authorised in advance to fire in Polish airspace on 10 September 2025, though every engagement that night was still approved on his order. On 17 September this year, after what was probably a jet drone struck four kilometres from the border near Dorohusk, Tomczyk described an order to fire "automatically once it is detected" if the object crossed the border, and in the same answer said "identification in peacetime is absolutely necessary". Monday's announcement reconciles the two by redefining identification: still required, no longer by sight. On 30 July the F-16 sent after a Kh-101 was over the site when it struck; the decision ran through Poland's national command, and no order to fire was given.

Kaja Kallas, the High Representative, said after the Foreign Affairs Council in its defence format in Brussels that "member states agreed on the first step of strategic review of EUMAM, extending our mission for Ukraine for another two years". The EU military assistance mission, which trains Ukrainian soldiers on European soil, gets a coordination cell in Kyiv for battlefield lessons and military education. The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg put money into modernising two training centres inside Ukraine, the Netherlands EUR 10 million of it. On the Peace Facility Kallas said the member states "agreed on the allocation" of the EUR 6.6 billion and that the facility "has become one of the key instruments for EU assistance"; she intends to discuss replenishing it. None of the accounts reported the adoption of the first European Defence Projects of Common Interest, which the Council had been due to take. Kallas said: "Today, many called for the early disbursement of part of the funds from the EUR 90 billion loan package planned for 2027."

Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that he had told Volodymyr Zelenskyy "you gotta take it easy on the refineries", and that Zelenskyy had answered: "Well, we'll probably do that." Framing it by oil prices, he said: "This isn't really a Middle Eastern problem; this is more of a Russia problem." A Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Kyiv has made no commitment and would stop hitting refineries only if Russia agreed to an energy ceasefire in return. On Monday Matthew Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, told Fox News that Ukraine's long-range strikes are "helping to, I think, bring the sides closer together".

On 14 September Trump had posted: "Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy Targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise!" Syzran was hit within hours. Ukraine's general staff has since reported strikes on the Moscow refinery at Kapotnya on 20 September, on Samara and Ufa the night before Zelenskyy met Trump on 22 September, on Perm and Novoshakhtinsk on 24–25 September, and on the Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai overnight on 26 September. After that meeting Zelenskyy set the terms that Kyiv repeated on Sunday: "a total ceasefire on all energy infrastructure, including oil and diesel refineries", if Russia does the same.

On Monday drones struck central Kyiv through a nine-hour daytime alert. The National Academy of Sciences building burned, and the education and science ministry, the Dobrobut clinic near the Constitutional Court and buildings in three districts were hit. Vitalii Klitschko, the mayor, counted one woman killed and 19 injured, three of them children, with nine more injured later in the day; a strike on the Stolichny market on Sunday evening had killed two. Zelenskyy: "Russia will definitely face a response to this."