Blast at Lviv Recruitment Center, NATO on Alert

A car-borne explosive struck a military recruitment center in Mykolaiv, Lviv Oblast, on Wednesday, wounding a soldier in an attack prosecutors have opened as terrorism; two locals have already been detained. It follows an earlier blast at the same entrance that hospitalized another serviceman, the second strike on the center within hours. Elsewhere on the eastern front, Ukraine reshuffled its command as Major General Viktor Nikolyuk stepped down from leading the East grouping, replaced by two new bodies, Center and Azov, under Biletskyy and Prokopenko. In Kyiv Oblast, a Russian drone hit Bucha district, wounding a girl born in 2019 and damaging four buildings, three of them homes. The wider picture darkened as Polish PM Donald Tusk disclosed intelligence that Russia is preparing hybrid drone and missile strikes on NATO states backing Ukraine, meant to look accidental and paralyze Article 5. Poland's forces had a pre-authorized order to down a Russian drone that crashed in Volyn, four kilometers from the border. Against that backdrop, Trump said talks on a permanent US base in Poland had made significant progress, praising President Nawrocki and promising a location very soon. In Germany, the far-right AfD won the Saxony-Anhalt election with roughly 44 percent, leaving mainstream parties, who have ruled out governing with it, scrambling for a coalition.