cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11575654
Three times in one day, phones lit up across this Polish border community with a warning: A drone or a missile could cross from Ukraine, and residents should stay vigilant in case they might need to take cover.
Above the village of Dorohusk in eastern Poland, vapor trails cut across the pale blue sky and military helicopters rumbled overhead. Just 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) away, traffic at the border crosing into Ukraine was suspended three times, and staff were even evacuated once.
The alerts and disruptions on Thursday ... reflected a new reality along Poland's eastern frontier, where the war in Ukraine — now 4 1/2 years old — has felt increasingly close.
The anxiety intensified after two Russian drones exploded on the Ukrainian side of the Dorohusk-Yahodyn crossing in the early hours of Sept. 13. The explosions could clearly be heard in Dorohusk.
“There is new restlessness and fear because you could hear those explosions very well on that night in our village,” said Wojciech Sawa, the Dorohusk mayor. “We had never had something like that before. This was the first time the sirens wailed.”
...
In Dorohusk, people have lived in the shadow of the war for years. They watched Ukrainian refugees flee across the frontier in the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion and, this July, had a Russian missile pass through airspace in eastern Poland before crashing some 90 kilometers (56 miles) inside the country.
...
Kids in border regions have to evacuate when sirens warn of air threat
Jarosław Wójcicki, the Dorohusk school’s director, said staff, including the school psychologist, now discuss with students “practically every day” how to stay safe.
The school had to be evacuated once so far and Wójcicki showed the two rooms in the basement of the school building where the kids took cover. Windows had been boarded up to avoid glass shards hurting anyone in case of an explosion.
“The older children had no problem at all, without showing any particular emotion,” the director said. "You could see a little fear among the younger children, but they were well looked after by their teachers.”
Wójcicki is responsible for the safety of hundreds of children who travel from nearby villages to attend school in Dorohusk, and his voice wavered as he described the enormity of the task.
...
If you have to evacuate because explosives may drop on you, in how far is that still hybrid anything..?