Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 18, 2026
Excerpts:
Poland has changed its air defense posture in response to increasing Russian strikes against border infrastructure and drone and other incursions into the territories of states neighboring Ukraine. Military aviation “preventively” operated in Polish airspace on September 17 in order to protect eastern Poland amid Russian strikes against central Ukraine, according to the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command.
Polish Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz similarly stated on September 3 that Polish air forces would expand their protection of Polish airspace, including with F-16 fighter jets and helicopters, due to Russian drone incursions in recent weeks.
Aviation in Poland is likely sortieing while Russian air targets are still operating in central Ukraine because the expansion of Russia's use of its faster jet-powered Geran-type drones has significantly reduced the time available for neighboring states to react to Russian drones nearing or entering their airspace from Ukraine.
Sortieing aircraft more often, however, will increase the financial costs and maintenance requirements for NATO air forces and thus reflects a real way in which Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace impose costs on alliance members.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reported on September 17 that intelligence indicates that Russia plans to conduct drone and missile strikes against states on NATO's eastern flank supporting Ukraine, such as Poland.
Tusk added that the Kremlin intends these strikes to appear to be “random” and will make official claims that the strikes were accidents. Tusk assessed that the strikes aim to weaken NATO states’ motivations to invoke NATO's Article 5 and to show that the article is only “theoretical.” ISW continues to assess that both intentional and unintentional Russian drone incursions enable the Russian military to test NATO air defenses and erode the meaning of NATO's Article 5 collective defense provision.
Russian President Vladimir Putin seized several prominent foreign enterprises under the pretext of defending Russian national security as he continues to expand and exercise his power to nationalize foreign and Russian assets. Putin signed a decree on September 17 that places 16 Russian companies, including Russian subsidiaries of French companies Auchan and Lemana PRO (formerly Leroy Merlin) and of the Swiss company Nestlé, under the “temporary management” of L.E.V. Management, effective immediately with no expiration date.
Putin enacted this decree on the basis of an existing April 2023 decree that authorized the Russian government to take “temporary management” of any property, securities, or shares belonging to persons associated with countries that Russia designates as “unfriendly” and that threaten Russian national security or property rights.
Both Putin's September 17, 2026, and April 2023 decrees authorize indefinite “temporary management” over an enterprise's property rights, effectively constituting nationalization of private assets.
Both decrees also designate the Russian Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo) - an entity responsible for channeling revenues from nationalized property into the Russian federal budget - as the manager for any property seized under the decree, while also allowing Putin to appoint another organization as the manager at his discretion. Putin's September 17 decree authorizes L.E.V. Management to manage all 16 companies’ assets instead of Rossimushchestvo for an unspecified reason. Independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe identified the director of L.E.V. Management as retired Russian Major General Andrei Krayushkin, who served as the first deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Migration Department from 2016 until at least 2020.
ISW has repeatedly assessed that Putin is likely setting conditions for a broader nationalization of Russian private assets to support state revenues as he more desperately seeks fiscal relief and additional revenues amid rising war costs.
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-18-2026/
