A Russian drone hit a petrol station last night at the international Yagodin border crossing, on the border between Ukraine and Poland. The fire engulfed the building and freight lorries parked nearby. Footage from the scene shows tall flames and several lorries burning. There is no information so far on any casualties.

Yagodin is not a minor dot on the map. It is an international road crossing and one of the key links between western Ukraine and the European Union - a place through which goods, lorries and the entire trade line of a country at war pass. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha confirmed that the Russian drone targeted the Ukrainian-Polish border specifically, and said the Russian strike is now arriving right up against the border of the EU and NATO.

The warning came days earlier - and it happened anyway

What gives the attack particular weight is the timing. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had warned only days earlier that Warsaw expected attempts to strike the crossings between Ukraine and Poland, with the aim of further disrupting Ukrainian trade and logistics. The warning was public, the target was named, and the strike landed regardless. What is an accurate prediction worth if no protection follows from it?

The attack at Yagodin was part of a far broader operation. According to Ukrainian air force data, Russia launched 453 drones of various types from the evening of 12 September. The Ukrainian side says air defences shot down or jammed 405 of them, with impacts recorded at 13 locations. That is a calculation in which even the best interception rate looks small - because the forty-eight that got through still land somewhere.

The strikes are moving west

Explosions were reported in Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and the Khmelnytskyi region. One person was injured in Ivano-Frankivsk, and the railway station and public transport were temporarily halted because of the danger. In the Khmelnytskyi region drone debris started a fire on the premises of a business. New strikes were reported in the Lviv region.

Because of the strikes so close to the border, on 13 September Poland raised the readiness of certain air defence elements and scrambled a military helicopter to monitor the situation. Warsaw says the measures are preventive.

This is not the first crossing to burn

The Yagodin attack comes just days after a strike on another important Ukrainian international crossing - Starokozache, on the border with Moldova, where on 9 September two people were killed, three injured, and traffic was temporarily halted.

The pattern is legible without a military analyst: the strikes are systematically closing in on Ukraine's western exits - the railway, the road corridors and the border crossings through which the country maintains its links to the European Union. It is not the front being targeted. It is the way out.

And on the other side of those crossings stands the European Union, which for now is raising readiness and scrambling helicopters to monitor. The Balkans know this scene by heart: first it burns near the border, then someone says it was predictable.