Key facts
- Russia is targeting logistics hubs, industrial sites, and transport infrastructure far from the front lines in Ukraine.
- A Russian drone struck a Kyiv-Warsaw train near the Polish border on September 13, with no passengers harmed.
- Organizations working in Ukraine are urged to update their security protocols to reflect changing risks.
- Distance from the front line is no longer a sufficient basis for risk assessment.
- Daily Humanity has trained over 4,000 people in Ukraine on hostile environment awareness and risk assessment.
Russia's military is increasingly striking targets far from the front lines in Ukraine, including warehouses, logistics hubs, and transport infrastructure, necessitating updated security protocols for organizations operating in the country. The traditional reliance on distance from the front line as a primary risk assessment variable is no longer sufficient, as Russia's long-range drone attacks expand into rear areas.
On September 13, a Russian drone struck a train carrying over 200 passengers at Yahodyn station, approximately 2 kilometers from the Polish border. The train, bound for Warsaw, had departed minutes after a European officials' train left the same station. No passengers were harmed due to timely warnings from a monitoring team, according to Ukraine's state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia.
Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, reported that Russia launched over 2,500 jet-powered drones at Ukraine in August alone. These attacks, which previously occurred mostly at night, are now increasingly happening during daylight hours and targeting what is described as the civilian-adjacent economy.
Organizations are being urged to move beyond general risk awareness and develop specific, daily decision-making processes that account for evolving threats. This includes understanding variables such as different drone types, alert categories, communication outages, damaged infrastructure, and medical or evacuation constraints. Many corporate travel policies, written for standard business travel, do not adequately address the complexities of operating in a war zone.
Daily Humanity, an organization that has trained over 4,000 individuals in Ukraine, emphasizes the need for structured risk assessments that go beyond intuition or past experiences. Their assessments show that most participants struggle to conduct a thorough risk analysis for their deployments, often relying on informal advice from colleagues. The organization advocates for a short, repeatable process that identifies specific physical, environmental, medical, legal, reputational, cultural, and data risks for each deployment, followed by a go/no-go decision based on pre-set criteria and mitigation measures.