Power cuts in Lviv oblast

Russian drone strikes on energy infrastructure in Lviv oblast left more than 17,000 consumers without electricity on Tuesday, 20 October, according to the regional head, Maksym Kozycki. Nearly 16,000 of them were in the Yavoriv district and over 1,200 in the Sheptytskyi district, both of which border Poland. Kozycki said on Telegram that an employee of a police protection unit was injured during one of the air raid alarms in the Yavoriv district and had been hospitalized. Drone warnings reached residents through Telegram around a dozen times in a single day. Power was restored in both districts roughly two hours after the attack.

RCB alerts across eastern Poland

The Government Security Centre (RCB) sent alerts on Tuesday to residents of counties in eastern Podkarpackie and Lubelskie voivodeships, advising them to find a safe place and follow the instructions of the services. Among the cities named were Rzeszów, Lublin, Przemyśl, Krosno and Zamość. An alert sent on Tuesday afternoon covered eastern counties of Podkarpackie, including Przemyśl and Krosno, and was one of several that day linked to Russian air raids on Ukraine. Earlier alerts that day had not pointed to a threat on Polish territory. A later alert at 21:15 reached residents of both voivodeships and said Polish aircraft were operating in Polish airspace.

Military response and airspace

Polish fighter jets were scrambled as the Russian attack on Ukraine continued, according to TVP Info. Lieutenant Colonel Jacek Goryszewski, spokesman for the Operational Command of the Armed Forces, told TVN24 that the alert was issued because unmanned aircraft had come within 15 kilometres of the Polish border. He described the activity in these words:

“Since morning we have been observing a very large number of unmanned aircraft, including jet-powered ones, operating in western Ukraine.”

Several hours later, the Operational Command said the security measures had ended and air defence systems had returned to standard operations. It recorded no violation of Polish airspace. Lublin and Rzeszów airports resumed flights after an earlier alert was cancelled following 17:00.

Lublin search for unidentified object

Separately, the military ended a search near Lublin for an unidentified flying object after residents reported a sound on the night of Sunday, 18 October, near Lake Zemborzyce. More than 30 soldiers from the 2nd Lublin Territorial Defence Brigade, supported by a ground search and rescue team, searched areas south of the city in the Niedrzwica Duża commune. Captain Marta Gaborek, the brigade's press officer, said no objects linked to the reported event had been found in the searched sectors. Tuesday was the third day of the operation.