Belarus reactivates signal repeaters to guide Russian drones into western Ukraine

Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service has accused Belarus of reactivating repeaters that boost the signal of Russian drones.

On September 13, an attack using these drones narrowly missed a diplomatic train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

State Border Guard Service spokesman Andriy Demchenko said Belarus had restarted relay stations to boost the signal of Russian “Shahed” and “Gerber” drones, Ukrinform reports. According to him, the drones enter from Russian territory, fly close to the Belarusian border where they receive a boosted signal, and then push deeper into western Ukraine — into the Rivne, Volyn, and Lviv regions.

The September 13 attack struck a petrol station near the Yahodyn border crossing and the locomotive of a Kyiv–Warsaw passenger train. There were no casualties: the train had been evacuated after Ukraine received intelligence about the impending strike. A separate diplomatic train carrying Johnson, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and EU security advisers had left the station several minutes before the strike — departing ahead of schedule.

Demchenko recalled that Belarus had previously switched off the repeaters after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued an ultimatum to Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in June, warning that Ukraine would destroy the equipment itself if it was not shut down. The repeaters were inactive for several weeks, but Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Oleh Ivashchenko confirmed last week that they had resumed operation.

“Now they have turned them on again,” Demchenko said, adding that despite the continuing threat from the Belarusian direction, “at present we are not observing any build-up of strike forces near our borders ready to launch an invasion.”

The attack on Yahodyn came against a backdrop of growing concern about the drone threat in Europe. On September 14, NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that had entered Lithuanian airspace. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda called the moment a test of allied readiness and wrote on X that “as Russia intensifies its aggression against Ukraine, such readiness is vitally necessary for our region.” Nausėda also described the drone incidents in Europe as another “attempt by the Kremlin to punish countries that support Ukraine.”